UNIVERSAL TRAITS OF ICONIC VOCABULARY: A TYPOLOGICAL STUDY

Devoted to the description of some universal traits that characterize iconic words of unrelated languages. Iconic (onomatopoeic and sound symbolic) words are the words that have a certain structural (iconic) similarity between form and meaning. While coining an iconic word a speaker strives to achieve the maximum similarity to the sound he or she is denoting. As a result such imitative formations bear greater resemblance to the natural sounds they name than to the rest of the language’s vocabulary.

Authors: М. А. Flaksman

Direction: Humanitarian science

Keywords: Sound iconicity, ideophone, phonosemantics, onomatopoeic words, sound symbolism, icon, linguistic typology

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