Comparative Study On Japanese And Chinese Mimetic Words

Although there is a relatively long history for mimetic words, yet the history considering them as an independent class of words, called mimetic words, is very short. That is to say, the independent study history of them is not long. People always discuss them with the term onomatopoetic words together. There are few individual studies on them. Even if some scholars research, they mainly discuss mimetic words affiliated with onomatopoetic words. This paper plans to dissert Japanese mimetic words, starting from the point of onomatopoetic words, the definition of mimetic vords and so on. It tries to completely compare Japanese and Chinese mimetic words from all aspects, such as the development and formation, phonetics, structure of words, meaning as well as syntax, etc. The thesis will analyse the deeper reasons from the nationality and culture of these two countries, so that we can have a deeper understanding of mimetic words in these two countries.This paper is composed by four chapters.The first chapter is introduction, inspecting predecessors’research achievements, presenting the issue and clarifying the research method and purpose of the thesis.From the overview of onomatopoeia in Japanese made by Haruhiko Kindaichi, the second chapter provides the definition of mimetic words. It inquiries the definition of onomatopoetic words and mimetic word in detail and tries to find out the more appropriate methods to distinguish onomatopoetic words from mimetic words.There are no mimetic words Chinese language. Although there is no unified viewpoint of mimetic words, we can identified the adjectives to express state as mimetic words, according to the current published works. The state adjectives in Chinese adjectives will be detailedly discussed in chapter three.So far researches on comparison of Japanese and Chinese mimetic words, especially comprehensively comparing research are unattended. Therefore, this paper collects a large amount of vocabulary cases of mimetic words in chapter four. from the structure, meaning and usage and other aspects to investigate mimetic words of these two countries. It aims to explore the differences and similarities of mimetic words and find out the existed reasons.In brief, there exists plenty of mimetic words in Japanese, while there are abundant adjectives in Chinese, with differences and relations. From the comprehensively comparing research, we can draw three differences as follows:1. In the structure of words, the largest proportion of Japanese mimetic words is the ABAB type with four syllables. However, the largest proportion of Chinese mimetic words is ABB type with three syllables.2. In the meaning of words, Japanese mimetic words prefer to express flavor, showing colour very little. While Chinese mimetic words not only present taste and smell, but also colour.3. The basic grammar of Japanese mimetic words is using adverbs as adverbials. Chinese mimetic words belong to adjectives, with the grammatical feature of adjectives. They can be used as any ingredient of sentence.