Article in:
Studies in Language: Online-First Articles

A typology of depiction marking

The prosody of Japanese ideophones and beyond

| Nagoya University
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 formal characteristics of ideophones, such as prosodic prominence and quotative constructions, illustrate framing and foregrounding, this paper discusses low-pitched quotative indexes in Japanese as backgrounding-type depiction markers. These quotatives immediately follow ideophones and exclamatory quotations and set them off. They also underlie the exceptional pitch pattern of heavy syllables in ideophones.
Keywords: depiction, ideophones, Japanese, prosody, quotations
Published online: 30 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17029.aki
References

References

Akinaga, Kazue
2001 Shinmeikai nihongo akusento jiten [A Shinmeikai dictionary of Japanese accent]. Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar
Akita, Kimi
2015 Ideophones and reported discourse as depictive signs. Gengo Bunka Kyōdō Kenkyū Purojekuto 2014: Shizen Gengo e no Rironteki Apurōchi [Osaka University Joint Project on Language & Culture 2014: Theoretical Approaches to Natural Language]. 1–10.Google Scholar
2020 Modality-specificity of iconicity: The case of motion ideophones in Japanese. In Pamela Perniss, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), Operationalizing iconicity, 3–20. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Akita, Kimi & Prashant Pardeshi
(eds.) 2019 Ideophones, mimetics and expressives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Akita, Kimi & Takeshi Usuki
2016 A constructional account of the “optional” quotative marking on Japanese mimetics. Journal of Linguistics 52(2). 245–275. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Alderete, John & Alexei Kochetov
2017 Integrating sound symbolism with core grammar: The case of expressive palatalization. Language 93(4). 731–766. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bodomo, Adams B.
2006 The structure of ideophones in African and Asian languages: The case of Dagaare and Cantonese. In John Mugane, John P. Hutchison & Dee A. Worman (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: African languages and linguistics in broad perspectives, 203–213. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H.
2006 Depicting as a method of communication. Psychological Review 123(3). 324–347. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 Depicting in communication. In Peter Hagoort (ed.), Human language: From genes and brains to behavior, 235–247. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Richard J. Gerrig
1990 Quotations as demonstrations. Language 66(4). 764–805. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
https://​www​.english​-corpora​.org​/coca/ (last access 11 August 2020).
Diffloth, Gérard
1972 Notes on expressive meaning. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 8. 440–447.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark
2011 The meaning and use of ideophones in Siwu. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics & Radboud University PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
2015 Ideophones and reduplication: Depiction, description, and the interpretation of repeated talk in discourse. Studies in Language 39(4). 946–970. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 Expressiveness and system integration: On the typology of ideophones, with special reference to Siwu. STUF – Language Typology and Universals 70(2). 119–141.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark & Kimi Akita
2017 An inverse relation between expressiveness and grammatical integration: On the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones, with special reference to Japanese. Journal of Linguistics 53(3). 501–532. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark, Damián E. Blasi, Gary Lupyan, Morton H. Christiansen & Padraic Monaghan
2015 Arbitrariness, iconicity, and systematicity in language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19(10). 603–615. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, Lindsay & Gabrielle Hodge
2018 Language as description, indication, and depiction. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 716. 1–15.Google Scholar
Franco, Ludovico
2017 L-syntax and phono-symbolism: On the status of ideophones in complex predicates. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 62(2). 243–279. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Güldemann, Tom
2008 Quotative indexes in African languages: A synchronic and diachronic survey. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Güldemann, Tom
2016 Maximal backgrounding = focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551–590. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haiman, John
2018 Ideophones and the evolution of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hamano, Shoko Saito
1986 The sound-symbolic system of Japanese. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Hamano, Shoko
1998 The sound-symbolic system of Japanese. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Hinton, Leanne, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala
(eds.) 1994 Sound symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirose, Yukio
1995 Direct and indirect speech as quotations of public and private expression. Lingua 95. 223–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide
2017 Basque ideophones from a typological perspective. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 62(2). 196–220. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Iwasaki, Shoichi
2014 Grammar of the internal expressive sentences in Japanese: Observations and explorations. In Kaori Kabata & Tsuyoshi Ono (eds.), Usage-based approaches to Japanese grammar: Towards the understanding of human language, 55–83. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kadooka, Ken-Ichi
2007 Nihongo onomatope goi ni okeru keitaiteki/on’inteki taikeisei ni tsuite [On the morphological and phonological systematicity of Japanese ideophonic lexemes]. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers.Google Scholar
Kageyama, Taro
2007 Explorations in the conceptual semantics of mimetic verbs. In Bjarke Frellesvig, Masayoshi Shibatani & John Smith (eds.), Current issues in the history and structure of Japanese, 27–82. Tokyo: Kurosio.Google Scholar
Kakehi, Hisao, Ikuhiro Tamori & Lawrence Schourup
1996 Dictionary of iconic expressions in Japanese. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kita, Sotaro
1997 Two-dimensional semantic analysis of Japanese mimetics. Linguistics 35(2). 379–415. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Semantic schism and interpretive integration in Japanese sentences with a mimetic: A reply to Tsujimura. Linguistics 39(2). 419–436. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Klewitz, Gabriele & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
1999 Quote – unquote?: The role of prosody in the contextualization of reported speech sequences. Pragmatics 9(4). 459–485. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kubozono, Haruo
1999 Mora and syllable. In Natsuko Tsujimura (ed.), The handbook of Japanese linguistics, 31–61. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2019 The phonological structure of Japanese mimetics and motherese. In Kimi Akita & Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), Ideophones, mimetics and expressives, 35–56. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Per B. Brockhoff & Rune H. B. Christensen
2017 lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software 82(13). 1–26. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nasu, Akio
2002 Nihongo onomatope no gokeisei to inritsu kōzō [Word formation and prosodic structure of Japanese ideophones]. Ibaraki: University of Tsukuba PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis B.
1996 Sounds like life: Sound-symbolic grammar, performance, and cognition in Pastaza Quechua. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J.
1994 The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), Sound symbolism, 325–347. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders
1932 Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
R Core Team
2018 R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Sadanobu, Toshiyuki
2015 Four types of linguistic resources for variable speaking units in common Japanese. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan 19(2). 109–114.Google Scholar
Sasamoto, Ryoko
2019 Onomatopoeia and relevance: Communication of impressions via sound. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sells, Peter
2017 The significance of the grammatical study of Japanese mimetics. In Noriko Iwasaki, Peter Sells & Kimi Akita (eds.), The grammar of Japanese mimetics: Perspectives from structure, acquisition, and translation, 7–19. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Shin’ichi & Haruo Kubozono
1999 Nihongo no hatsuon kyōshitsu: Riron to renshū [Introduction to Japanese pronunciation: Theory and practice]. Tokyo: Kurosio.Google Scholar
Thompson, Arthur Lewis & Youngah Do
2019 Defining iconicity: An articulation-based methodology for explaining the phonological structure of ideophones. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1). 72. 1–40. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Toratani, Kiyoko
2018 Particle drop of mimetics in Japanese: A Discourse Grammar approach. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5(1). 39–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Usuki, Takeshi & Kimi Akita
2015 What’s in a mimetic?: On the dynamicity of its iconic stem. In Masako K. Hiraga, William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara & Kimi Akita (eds.), Iconicity: East meets West, 109–123. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Voeltz, Friedrich K. Erhard & Christa Kilian-Hatz
(eds.) 2001 Ideophones. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Westermann, Diedrich
1927 Laut, Ton und Sinn in westafrikanischen Sudansprachen. In Franz Boas (ed.), Festschrift Meinhof, 315–328. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen.Google Scholar