Chinese And Japanese Onomatopoeia Is A Comparative Study

Though a lot of languages have onomatopoeia words, the status of onomatopoeia words in linguistics is lower than other word classes. However, linguists have paid more attention to onomatopoeia words in recent years. Chinese and Japanese are representative languages with abundant use of onomatopoeia among them. The mainstream of study for Chinese onomatopoeia words has long been focused on their symbolic properties and its classification; in contrast, the study in Japanese has concentrated on its structure and meaning. Comparative studies of Chinese and Japanese mostly focus on translating accuracy between these two languages. In an approach combining cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, and Bernard Comrie's linguistic typology and traditional dialectology, this thesis examines onomatopoeia words in Chinese and Japanese from many angles including basic categories, as well as phonetic and semantic aspects of onomatopoeia words. Through comparison of Chinese and Japanese, this thesis discovers that the phonetic structures of these two languages accord with their own phonetic systems and have many similar aspects. The motivational connection between sound and meaning is the basic characteristic of onomatopoeia words, and both Chinese and Japanese follow the basic development routes from imitating sound to imitating state. Onomatopoeia words in Chinese and Japanese have rich syntactic functions on the whole. Considering that state-imitating words in Chinese are more similar to onomatopoeia words in terms of forms, structures and functions, and are more different from the adjectives, this thesis proposes that it is perhaps more suitable that state-imitating and onomatopoeia words should be unified as one word class.