Chapter published in:
Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems
Edited by Sara Lenninger, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg and Elżbieta Tabakowska
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 18] 2022
► pp. 331–350

Echoes of the past

Old English onomatopoeia

| Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich | Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Old English texts preserve a number of imitative words which give an intriguing insight into the sphere of sound-denotation of this ancient language. The study of Anglo-Saxon texts, however, reveals that many onomatopoeic words used there are non-existent in the Present-Day English. In this paper I argue that more than a half of these imitative lexemes have become extinct or have been replaced in the course of the following 1000-year history of the English language, and that such replacement was, at least partly, predetermined by the very nature of the imitative words. This study has been conducted using both poetic texts and etymological dictionaries.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and research methods
    • 2.1Material used
      • Lexicographic sources
      • Textual sources
    • 2.2Methods used
      • Phonosemantic analysis
      • Diachronic evaluation of the imitative lexicon
  • 3.Studying imitative words in Holthausen’s Altenglisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch
    • 3.1Preservation of Old English imitative words
    • 3.2Old English imitative words according to the de-iconization stages
  • 4.Old and the Present-Day English imitative lexicons
    • 4.1Quantitative analysis of Old and the Present-Day English imitative lexicons
    • 4.2Core-periphery models of Old and Present-Day English imitative vocabularies according to de-iconization stages
  • 5.Imitative words in Anglo-Saxon poems
  • 6.Some remarks on the further historical development of the Old English imitative vocabulary
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Dictionaries
Published online: 10 November 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.18.15fla
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