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Paper short abstract

This study re-examines linguistic motivation in Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeia from a holistic, sound-schema-based perspective. It identifies language-specific sound schemata, the semantic domains they encode, and links the two systems by constructing a Combined sound-schema map.

Paper long abstract

Linguistic motivation and sound symbolism can be approached and researched in multifarious ways. Whether considered a cross-linguistic phenomenon or one specific to a particular language, the linguistically motivated link can be grasped from the level of phonemes or phonesthemes up to the holistic sound patterns of words. Onomatopoeia is informative because its meanings rely on recurring, functionally loaded patterns, but these cannot always be clearly analyzed using classical morphological methods, highlighting the need for a new perspective.

The study aims to re-examine linguistic motivation in Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeia from a sound-schema-based (word-level) perspective, rather than by correlating meanings with individual sounds or by searching for direct cross-linguistic form–meaning pairs. It investigates (i) which sound schemata characterize Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeia, (ii) which semantic dimensions these schemata recurrently encode, and (iii) how the two systems can be systematically linked via shared semantic domains.

The approach is grounded in a holistic, dynamic, analogy-based view of linguistic structure (Szilágyi 2013, 2015) and is supported by usage-based evidence for holistic storage and analogical organization in the mental lexicon (MacWhinney 2003).

In a first step we identify the sound schemata (linguistic patterns) characteristic of Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeia and the semantic domains (functions) these patterns encode. Building on these attributes, we first develop two separate language-specific maps (Map I. – Japanese; Map II. – Hungarian), organized around distinctive sound schemata and their associated meaning domains (e.g., durativity, momentariness) (Research Level I.). These maps provide a methodological framework in which Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeia can be analyzed within their own systems while also being compared to each other. In a second step, we construct a Combined Map based on the semantic domains represented in the two language-specific maps, designed to align Japanese and Hungarian sound schemata that encode the same meaning domains (Research Level II.). Through this shared semantic-domain-based map, we aim to link the Japanese and Hungarian onomatopoeic lexicons, highlight systematic correspondences between them, and make their similarities explicit.

The study offers insights for teaching Japanese as a foreign language by focusing on native-speaker-sensitive meanings encoded in holistic onomatopoeic patterns.

onomatopoeia, sound-schemata, contrastive linguistic