Onomatopoeias: a new perspective around space, image schemas and phoneme clusters

Abstract

Onomatopoeias (<old Greek ὀνοματοποιία; ὄνομα ‘name’, ποιέω ‘I make’) are mimetic elements representing sounds and lexicalizations of sounds (to smack). A large set of problems and studies (based on repositories: Gubern and Gasca in Diccionario de onomatopeyas del comic. Cattedra, Madrid, 2008:1.000 lemmas; corpora: Zlatev in Sound symbolism and cross-modal iconicity in language, Università Roma Tre, Rome, 2013; algorithms: Asaga et al. in Onomatopedia, pp 601–612, 2008) has been related to onomatopoeias since Cratilo’s analysis of the analogical dimension of verbal language. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to accept a (semantic, functional or grammatical) descriptive and explicative model of onomatopoeia, because the rules that constrain processes of selection and construction remain idiosyncratic and variable (Dogana in Le parole dell’incanto. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2002; Catricalà 2011). This article proposes a classification model based on spatial cognition criteria. The hypothesis (Catricalà 2011) is that onomatopoeias are related to image schemas (Johnson in The body in the mind. University Press, Chicago, 1987), i.e. to the visual mapping of a movement. We also refer to force dynamic (Talmy in Language typology and lexical description, pp 36–149, 1985; Jackendoff in Semantic structures. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990) as a basic model of conceptual maps (Langacker in Grammar and conceptualization. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1999). Categories are related to the presence of specific phonemes and phoneme clusters, while visual patterns correspond to different image schemas. The association between specific categories of pseudo-onomatopoeias and specific spatial/movement patterns is also the object of an experiment focused on onomatopoeia interpretation. Most part of data confirms a correlation between image schemas as CONTAINER/CONTAINMENT (crunch, plop) or SOURCE-PATH-GOAL (tattarrattat ‘shots’) and an occlusive consonant, while liquid and trill consonants correlate with PATH (vroom).