As is common with research of sound-symbolic words in the world’s languages (e.g.
Samarin 1971; Diffloth 1976; Kunene 1978; Zwicky and Pullum 1987; Hinton, Nichols, and Ohala (eds.) 1994; Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz (eds.) 2001), much attention has been paid to the extrinsic nature of this lexical class, focusing largely on descriptive generalizations of its idiosyncratic properties. Investigations of Japanese mimetics are no exception to this trend. In fact, more than twenty dictionaries have been published for this particular lexical class not only in Japanese (e.g. Asano (ed.) 1978; Atōda and Hoshino 1995; Ono (ed.) 2007) but also in English (Kakehi, Tamori, and Schourup 1996). The individual sets of characteristics that have been described to date are indeed interesting in their own right, but the question as to whether they have potential to contribute to generalizations pertinent to other lexical classes or to the lexicon as a whole in more general terms has not been sufficiently addressed. In particular, the morphophonological characteristics of mimetics have been typically linked up to reduplication (e.g.huwahuwa‘fluffy’), suffixation (e.g.huwaQ,huwaN, huwari‘fluffy’), and prosodic operations such as gemination (e.g.huwaQhuwa‘very fluffy’) and vowel lengthening (e.g. huwaaQ ‘very fluffy’) (Kobayashi 1935; Izumi 1976; Kindaichi 1978; Tamamura 1984; Nishio 1988; Otsubo 1989; Kakehi and Tamori (eds.) 1993; Tamori and Schourup 1999; Yamaguchi 2002). Of relevance is that these common morphophonological characteristics show semantic repercussions. For exam- ple, reduplicative forms imply repeated or continuous events while the suffixation of -rito a mimetic root may have the opposite semantic effect of quiet termination of an event; and gemination and vowel lengthening often serve as intensifiers. Similarly, it has been pointed out that mimetic pairs likekirakira‘glittering’vs.giragira‘glitter- ing unpleasantly’and sakusaku‘cutting smoothly’vs.zakuzaku‘cutting forcefully’
suggest that voicing of initial obstruents can add “heaviness/massiveness” to the meanings of forms with voiceless counterparts (Hamano 1998; Suzuki 1965;
Murakami 1980).
Apart from these descriptive studies, theoretically-oriented researchers have started to look at mimetics as forming a lexical class in which a coherent regularity can be defined as opposed to the previous assumption that the linguistic behavior of its members is arbitrary and idiosyncratic. According to this view, mimetics form a lexical class (or lexical stratum) that is on par with other lexical strata such as Yamato (i.e. native) words, Sino-Japanese words, and foreign words in that its members are bound by the same set of rules and constraints (McCawley 1968; Itô and Mester 1995). In the forefront of work that marks this new wave of investigations is Hamano’s extensive work on the topic (Hamano 1986, 1998). She closely investi- gated the phoneme-meaning relations between the two consonants in C1VC2V-based mimetic adverbs, as is summarized in (5) and (6) below, and drew the generalization that C1 describes the tactile nature of an object and C2refers to the type of move- ment. For example, the semantic distinction betweenkotukotu and tokutoku is ex- plained as:“the combination /k-t-/ means that‘a hard surface is involved in hitting,’ whereas the combination /t-k-/ means that‘a lax surface is involved in an inward/
outward movement’”(Hamano 1998: 170).
(5) C1 p taut surface light; small;fine
b taut surface heavy; large; coarse
t lack of surface tension; subduedness light; small;fine d lack of surface tension; subduedness heavy; large; coarse
k hard surface light; small;fine
g hard surface heavy; large; coarse
s non-viscous body; quietness light; small;fine z non-viscous body; quietness heavy; large; coarse h weakness; softness; unreliability;
indeterminateness m murkiness
n viscosity; stickiness; sliminess;
sluggishness
y leisurely motion; swinging motion;
unreliable motion
w human noise; emotional upheaval
(Hamano 1998: 172)
Mimetics 137
(6) C2 p, b explosion; breaking; decisiveness
t hitting of a surface; coming into close contact; complete agreement k opening; breaking up; swelling; expanding; puffing out; emission
from inside; surfacing; in-out movement s soft contact; friction
h breath
m ?
n bending; elasticity; unreliability; lack of force; weakness y sound from many sources; haziness; childishness w softness; faintness; haziness
r rolling;fluid movement
(Hamano 1998: 173) Although a number of exceptions to this generalization are found, it is noteworthy that Hamano’s detailed investigation brought to light a critical difference between monomoraic ((C)V) and bimoraic ((C1)V1C2V2) mimetic roots. Bimoraic roots (e.g.
poki forpokipoki, pokiN, andpoQkiri ‘crunching’) are more analytic and more lin- guistically constrained than monomoraic ones (e.g.poforpoQ‘appearing suddenly, blushing’, poNpoN ‘tossing, tapping’, and poiQ ‘tossing’) in that the latter do not seem to give rise to a clear phonosemantic generalization. That is, the meanings of CV-based mimetics are generally less transparent than those of CVCV-based ones, as the translations here suggest.
Itô and Mester (1995), following up on the original observation by McCawley (1968) about the lexical strata, discuss mimetics as a separate lexical stratum that is characterized by a set of phonological and phonotactic constraints, as shown in (7) (see Nasu 2015 for a detailed survey).
(7) a. Yamato *P *NT *DD
b. Sino-Japanese *P – *DD
c. Mimetic – *NT *DD
d. Foreign – – –
(Itô and Mester 1995: 820)
The constraint indicated by *Prefers to the prohibition of a single occurrence of [p];
*NT refers to a constraint against a nasal consonant immediately followed by a voiceless stop, preventing *[nt], *[mp], and *[ŋk] from surfacing; and geminate voiced obstruents are barred by the constraint *DD. As (7) illustrates, each lexical stratum is characterized by a unique combination of these three constraints: the Yamato(i.e. native) stratum is most heavily constrained while the foreign stratum is free of any of these phonological restrictions, and the Sino-Japanese and mimetic
strata come in between. Mimetic words follow *NT and *DD, but interestingly the lack of *P accounts for the observation that one-sixth of mimetic words start with [p] (Hamano 1998). The survey of phonological constraints in (7) suggests that there is legitimate reason for treating mimetic words as a lexical class (or stratum) in- dependent of each ofYamato, Sino-Japanese, and foreign strata.