Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives
Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi
[Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16] 2019. ix, 325 pp.
Kimi Akita
List of John Benjamins publications for which Kimi Akita plays a role.
Titles
Subjects Phonology | Semantics | Theoretical linguistics
Iconicity: East meets West
Edited by Masako K. Hiraga, William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita
[Iconicity in Language and Literature, 14] 2015. x, 279 pp.
Subjects Phonology | Semiotics | Theoretical linguistics | Theoretical literature & literary studies
Articles
2022. Chapter 4. Innovative binomial adjectives in Japanese food descriptions and beyond. The Language of Food in Japanese: Cognitive perspectives and beyond, Toratani, Kiyoko (ed.), pp. 111–132
Over the past two decades, the casual register of Japanese has developed a new class of binomial adjectives, such as fuwa-toro ‘fluffy and creamy’ and gū-kawa ‘overwhelmingly cute’. These terms are particularly common in creative, nuanced descriptions of food, fashion, and personality. This paper… read more | Chapter
2022. The iconicity ring model for sound symbolism. Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems, Lenninger, Sara, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg and Elżbieta Tabakowska (eds.), pp. 27–46
The ‘iconicity ring model’ proposed in this chapter depicts a lexicon’s evolutionary path from genuine iconicity (termed ‘primary iconicity’) to arbitrariness to another type of iconicity (termed ‘emergent iconicity’) that emerges from linguistic systematicity. The model captures the… read more | Chapter
2022. Chapter 3. Linguistic representations of visual motion: A crosslinguistic experimental study. Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description: Deixis, asymmetries, constructions, Sarda, Laure and Benjamin Fagard (eds.), pp. 43–67
Linguistic expressions of visual motion (e.g., look into the building) in ten languages are compared, based on a crosslinguistic production experiment. We examine how linguistic representations of visual motion are typologically akin to those of self- and caused motion events. The results suggest… read more | Chapter
2021. A typology of depiction marking: The prosody of Japanese ideophones and beyond. Studies in Language 45:4, pp. 865–886
Ideophones and direct quotations are “depictive” signs, or vivid re-enactments of what they signify. Pursuing the typology of linguistic depiction, the current study proposes a three-way classification of depiction marking strategies: framing, foregrounding, and backgrounding. While well-known… read more | Article
2020. Modality-specificity of iconicity: The case of motion ideophones in Japanese. Operationalizing Iconicity, Perniss, Pamela, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 3–20
This study examines the semantic variety and specificity of Japanese ideophones for spatial motion events to illustrate the modality-specificity of iconicity. As verbal icons, motion ideophones tend to depict dynamic (e.g., auditory, spatio-temporal) aspects of motion events. Suprasegmental… read more | Chapter
2020. Chapter 5. A fine-grained analysis of manner salience: Experimental evidence from Japanese and English. Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions, Matsumoto, Yo and Kazuhiro Kawachi (eds.), pp. 143–180
This chapter delves into the typological discussion of “manner salience” (Slobin 2004, 2006) by means of a fine-grained examination of different kinds of manner expressions. Our two speech elicitation experiments revealed that English speakers are clearly more manner salient than Japanese in the… read more | Chapter
2019. Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of Japanese. Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives, Akita, Kimi and Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), pp. 229–248
Mimetic/ideophonic utterances are often accompanied by expressive prosody and iconic gesture. This chapter reports the speaker’s facial expression and eye contact with the hearer as two more possible nonverbal correlates of mimetics on the basis of a multimodal corpus of Japanese interviews. It is… read more | Chapter
2019. Introduction: Ideophones, mimetics, and expressives: Theoretical and typological perspectives. Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives, Akita, Kimi and Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), pp. 1–10
Chapter
2017. Chapter 1. The typology of manner expressions: A preliminary look. Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide (ed.), pp. 39–60
The morphosyntax of manner expressions has attracted less attention than that of path expressions in the framing typology. Drawing primarily on experimental and quantitative data in Japanese and English, we propose and examine three parameters in the complex typology of manner expressions. It is… read more | Chapter
2017. Chapter 3. The functional nature of deictic verbs and the coding patterns of Deixis: An experimental study in English, Japanese, and Thai. Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide (ed.), pp. 95–122
This chapter examines the nature of linguistic expressions of Deixis, which is often coded somewhat differently from other components of Path. It is argued that deictic verbs like come are not merely spatial in meaning but also functional. Results of a video-based experiment in English, Japanese,… read more | Chapter
2015. Sound symbolism. Handbook of Pragmatics: 2015 Installment, Östman, Jan-Ola and Jef Verschueren (eds.)
Article
2015. Introduction: Ubiquity of Iconicity - East Meets West. Iconicity: East meets West, Hiraga, Masako K., William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita (eds.), pp. 1–9
Article
2015. What’s in a mimetic? On the dynamicity of its iconic stem. Iconicity: East meets West, Hiraga, Masako K., William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita (eds.), pp. 109–123
This paper explores the fundamental semantic and syntactic properties of Japanese mimetic lexemes as iconic signs that depict various eventualities by means of linguistic sound. We argue how the two central features of mimetics – stem-based morphology and dynamicity – restrict their morphosyntactic… read more | Article
2013. The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlates. Iconic Investigations, Elleström, Lars, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 331–350
This paper proposes an integrated account of the formal and functional non-uniformity exhibited by sound-symbolic words based on a hierarchy of lexical iconicity (i.e., iconicity of words). It is argued that the more iconic a vocalized sign is, the less strongly it is constrained by the linguistic… read more | Article
2013. FrameNet as a resource for paraphrase research. Advances in Frame Semantics, Fried, Mirjam and Kiki Nikiforidou (eds.), pp. 109–132
Theoretically as well as empirically, paraphrase is a pivotal concept in many academic and nonacademic fields. And yet, its investigation has made very slow progress, due mainly to the lack of a framework that is versatile enough to deal with the nebulous nature of paraphrase in use. This paper… read more | Article
2011. Toward a phonosemantic definition of iconic words. Semblance and Signification, Michelucci, Pascal, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 1–18
Most studies have tried to define inherently iconic words (mimetics, ideophones) in terms of their formal features but phonosemantic peculiarity, assumed without empirical consideration, is not evidently distinct from regular sound symbolism. Two experiments were conducted to probe the… read more | Article
2011. FrameNet as a resource for paraphrase research. Advances in Frame Semantics, pp. 104–127
Theoretically as well as empirically, paraphrase is a pivotal concept in many academic and nonacademic fields. And yet, its investigation has made very slow progress, due mainly to the lack of a framework that is versatile enough to deal with the nebulous nature of paraphrase in use. This paper… read more | Article