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Part of
Operationalizing Iconicity
Edited by Pamela Perniss, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 17] 2020
► pp. 21–38

The relationship between iconicity and systematicity in Korean ideophones

| Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
This chapter investigates the relationship between two forms of non-arbitrariness in Korean ideophones: relative iconicity, which is a resemblance-based mapping between relations among multiple forms and relations among multiple meanings (exemplified by paradigmatic consonantal symbolism), and systematicity, which is a statistical regularities-based mapping between form and meaning (exemplified by ideophonic vowel harmony). Using a written corpus of Korean ideophones, the present study quantifies the number of variants in consonantal constellations, where larger constellations are judged to have a higher degree of relative iconicity than smaller constellations. The results reveal that larger constellations are more susceptible to the influence exerted by vowel harmony. This language-internal finding suggests a tight correlation between relative iconicity and systematicity, and allows further investigation into its generalizability from a broad typological perspective.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relative iconicity and systematicity in Korean ideophones
  • 3.A summary of Kwon’s (2018) corpus-based study of Korean ideophones
  • 4.The present study
    • 4.1Iconicity levels involved in paradigmatic consonantal symbolism
    • 4.2Distribution of consonantal symbolism in Korean ideophones
    • 4.3Main analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.17.02kwo
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