Akita, Kimi, Jingyi Zhang & Katsuo Tamaoka (2020). Systematic Side of Sound Symbolism:
The Case of Suffixed Ideophones in Japanese. KLS Selected Papers, 2, 1-16.

Systematic Side of Sound Symbolism:
The Case of Suffixed Ideophones in Japanese*

Kimi Akita, Jingyi Zhang & Katsuo Tamaoka
Nagoya University
Abstract
Sound-meaning correspondences in ideophones are both iconic and systematic(i.e., statistically regular). Despite the growing interest in ideophones in linguistics andpsychology, the (non-iconic) systematic aspect of ideophones has been largely
neglected, and the relationship between systematicity and iconicity in ideophones also
remains unclear. This paper explores how five systematic features of “suffixed”
ideophones in Japanese (C1 voicing, C1 /p/, C2 /r/, vowel assonance, and suffix type)are related to the degree of iconicity. Our classification tree analysis reveals that C1
voicing and C2 /r/ make particularly important contributions to the iconicity-basedhierarchy of ideophones. It suggests that C1 voicing and C2 /r/ support relatively highand low parts of the hierarchy, respectively.

1

Introduction
Ideophones—also known as mimetics or expressives and subsuming onomatopoeia—are“marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2011: 25; emphasis added). Despite theincreasing interest in ideophones in linguistics and psychology, their sound-symbolic properties stilltend to be conceived of as extralinguistic. The purpose of this paper is to dig into the linguistic aspectof the sound-symbolic system of ideophones, with special reference to so-called “suffixed”
ideophones in Japanese. We adopt the classification tree method to holistically examine how eachphonological or morphological feature contributes to the system.
Japanese ideophones can be morphologically classified into reduplicated, suffixed, and othertypes, as illustrated in (1). Reduplicated and suffixed ideophones together account for almost 70% of
the whole inventory (based on the entries in Kakehi et al. (1996)).
(1)

Japanese ideophones:a.

Reduplicated (35.25%):
koNkoN ‘knocking,’ buubuu ‘oinking,’ poipoi ‘tossing,’ kotukotu ‘rapping,’
yurayura ‘swaying,’ ketyoNketyoN ‘harshly criticized’1* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Kansai Linguistic Society
1
The abbreviations used in this paper are as follows: DAT = dative; GER = gerundive; IDPH = ideophone; N =1b.

Suffixed (33.77%):
gyuQ ‘squeezing,’ piN ‘tightened up,’ gooN ‘bonging,’ huwaQ ‘fluffy,’ potyaN‘plopping,’ horori ‘dropping a tear’c.

Other (30.99%):
niNmari ‘smiling satisfactorily,’ suQpori ‘completely covered,’ saQsa ‘without
delay,’ uturautura ‘drowsing,’ kokekoQkoo ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’

Arguably all these ideophones are based on either monomoraic ((C)V) or bimoraic ((C1)V1C2V2) roots,with the latter less iconic and more linguistically constrained, according to Hamano (1998). Suffixedideophones consist of an ideophone root and /-Q/, /-N/, or /-ri/, and unlike reduplicated ideophones
they represent bounded events (Toratani 2018).
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 introduces two key semiotic
notions—systematicity and iconicity—and formulates a research question to be addressed in thecurrent study. Section 3 describes the five representative systematic features of Japanese ideophones
used in our classification tree analysis. The method and results of the statistical analysis are presented
in Sections 4 and 5, respectively. Section 6 discusses general implications of our findings, and Section
7 concludes this paper.

2 Systematicity and Iconicity
2.1 Definitions
The current study reconsiders the relationship between the form and meaning of ideophones. It
is becoming common in cognitive science to distinguish three types of form-meaning relationships:
arbitrariness, iconicity, and systematicity. All these notions are traditional and of common use inlinguistics, but their definitions have been slightly updated in the recent literature (Monaghan et al.
2014; Dingemanse et al. 2015).
Arbitrariness is the absence of motivation between form and meaning. For example, what iscalled tree in English is called by totally different names: Baum in German, arbre in French, and ki inJapanese. Since de Saussure (1916), the arbitrariness of linguistic signs has been taken to be afundamental principle in linguistic theories.
Iconicity and systematicity, as defined in the present paper, are two specific subtypes of
non-arbitrariness that are not exclusive to each other.2 Not essentially different from Peirce (1932),
iconicity is defined as a perceived resemblance between form and meaning (Emmorey 2014).
Reduplicated nouns in Japanese, such as yama-yama (mountain-mountain) ‘mountains’ and kuni-guni(country-country) ‘countries,’ are iconic in that repeated morphemes represent multiple referents.
Ideophones are also assumed to involve iconicity at different levels. The segmental iconicity ofmoraic nasal; NPST = nonpast; POL = polite; Q = first half of a geminate cluster (word-medially), glottal stop
(word-finally); QUOT = quotative; TOP = topic. We use “N” and “Q” only for transcribing ideophones.
2
The specific definitions of these two notions still differ from researcher to researcher.

2

ideophones is called sound symbolism (e.g., the association between /s/ and smoothness illustrated by
the Japanese ideophone surasura ‘fluent’), while their morphological shapes often have iconic
correspondences to aspectual features (e.g., the durativity of surasura).
Mirroring the gradable nature of iconicity, ideophonic lexicons are often hierarchically
represented. Hamano (1998), among many others, assumes that onomatopoeic (unimodal) ideophones(or “giongo/phonomimes”) are more iconic than non-onomatopoeic (crossmodal) ideophones (or“gitaigo/phenomimes”). Some linguists further divide non-onomatopoeic ideophones. To illustrate,
Dingemanse (2012) posits the implicational hierarchy in (2).
(2)

SOUND < MOVEMENT < VISUAL PATTERNS < OTHER SENSORY PERCEPTIONS < INNERFEELINGS AND COGNITIVE STATES(Dingemanse 2012: 663)
This fine-grained hierarchy predicts that if a language has ideophones for one semantic type (e.g.,
VISUAL PATTERNS), then it also has ideophones for lower-ranked meanings (e.g., SOUND, MOVEMENT),

but not vice versa (for other proposals, see Akita (2009); Van Hoey (2016); McLean (2019)).
Dingemanse attributes this ranking to the different types of iconicity (e.g., direct vs. relative iconicity)
involved in the different semantic types of ideophones. Note that, to consider (2) a hierarchy of
iconicity, the “less than” marks in it should be reversed.
Systematicity is defined as statistical regularity that may be language-specific. A well-known
example is the semi-regular correspondence between the stress patterns and syntactic categories inEnglish (e.g., ˈincrease (N) vs. inˈcrease (V); ˈsurvey (N) vs. surˈvey (V); ˈpresent (N, A) vs. preˈsent(V)). Moreover, English phonesthemes, such as gl- for vision-related meanings (e.g., glance, glisten,glitter, glow) and sn- for nose-related meanings (e.g., snarl, sneeze, sniff, snooze), are now considered
examples of systematic form-meaning mappings (Thompson & Do 2019; cf. Hinton et al. 1994).
Note that some of the above instances involve both iconicity and systematicity. For example,
the iconic reduplication of Japanese nouns is somewhat productive and systematic. Moreover, thephonestheme sn- appears to be at least partly based on an iconic sound-meaning mapping. This idea is
supported by Blasi et al. (2016), who based on the basic word lists from 6,452 languages found thatthe words for ‘nose’ contain /n/ at an above-chance level.
The coexistence of iconicity and systematicity in these linguistic signs leads us to question theiconicity of ideophones that has been taken for granted. Assuming ideophones are conventional lexical
items, it might be the case that some of the sound-meaning associations in ideophones are not iconic
but merely systematic. Put differently, the sound-symbolic system of ideophones might be a mixtureof iconic and systematic mappings (see Thompson & Do (2019) for a similar critical view onideophonic iconicity). The systematic side of ideophonic sound symbolism may make it different fromthe “pure” sound symbolism of nonce words in experimental studies, such as mal/mil for large/small
tables (Sapir 1929) and bouba/kiki for round/spiky shapes (Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001).

3

2.2

Research Question
Both positive and negative correlations have been noted between iconicity and systematicity.

Kwon (2018) reports on a positive correlation between the iconic and systematic properties of Korean
ideophones. Korean ideophones have a counter-universal system of vowel harmony in which “light”
vowels (/ɛ, a, o/) and “dark” vowels (/i, e, ɨ, ə, u/) do not cooccur and are associated with diminutive
and augmentative meanings, respectively (Cho 1994). However, quite a few ideophones violate thissystematic pattern and involve disharmonic vowels. Based on a thorough investigation of reduplicatedideophones, Kwon found that harmonic ideophones are more likely than disharmonic ideophones to beonomatopoeic (i.e., sound-mimicking), as shown in Figure 1.3 For example, tekək-tekək ‘rattling’ is aharmonic ideophone imitating sound, and kakul-kakul ‘winding’ is a disharmonic ideophone with a
non-auditory meaning.
Figure 1

Onomatopoeicity and Vowel Harmony in Korean Ideophones (adapted from Kwon (2018: 14))

(Reduplicated ideophones with vowel harmony are more likely than those without to represent sounds.)
100%
80%
60%

760

837

non-onomatopoeic
onomatopoeic

40%
20%
0%

113

65

harmonic

disharmonic

Given that Korean vowel harmony is a systematic feature and onomatopoeic ideophones are more
iconic than non-onomatopoeic ideophones (Section 2.1), Kwon’s finding can be interpreted as
illustrating a positive relationship between systematicity and iconicity.
On the other hand, McLean (2019) presents an iconicity-systematicity tradeoff view in her
crosslinguistic study of Japonic ideophones. She found that non-onomatopoeic ideophones tend tohave more similar segments than onomatopoeic ideophones and non-ideophonic words between
Japanese and Ryukyuan. She interprets this finding as follows. Due to their high iconicity,
onomatopoeic ideophones often have deviant forms (e.g., kokekokkoo ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’), and thisformal flexibility allows them to look very different across languages. On the other hand,
non-onomatopoeic ideophones are less flexible but still iconic, so they exhibit great phonologicalconsistency across languages (cf. Childs 1994; Güldemann 2008; Thompson & Do 2019).
These previous findings suggest that iconicity and systematicity may be both positively andnegatively correlated. In other words, it appears that some systematic features have iconic functions,3

A chi-squared test by the present authors revealed a significant difference between the two groups (χ2(1) =16.19, p < .001).

4

but some others do not. Therefore, in the present study, we investigate when systematicity andiconicity coincide and why. We look at suffixed ideophones in Japanese to pursue this researchquestion.

3

Japanese Ideophones
To answer the research question, we examine how five representative systematic features ofsuffixed ideophones in Japanese are correlated with iconicity. We chose suffixed ideophones because
they are highly productive and involve not only segmental but also morphological systematicity, as
described in this section.
The first feature we focus on is the voicing of initial obstruents (abbreviated as “C1_voi” forstatistical purposes). This phonetic feature plays a central role in the sound-symbolic system ofJapanese ideophones (Suzuki 1962; Hamano 1998). 51.05% (267/523) of all bimoraic ideophone rootsin Kakehi et al. (1996) form minimal pairs based on initial voicing, as illustrated in (3).
(3)

a.

/biku/ ‘trembling’vs. /piku/ ‘twitching’b.

/goro/ ‘a heavy object rolling’ vs. /koro/ ‘a light object rolling’c.

/zara/ ‘rough’vs. /sara/ ‘smooth’

According to Hamano’s (1998: 172) phonosemantic description, voiced and voiceless obstruents are
systematically associated with “light; small; fine” and “heavy; large; coarse” meanings, respectively(see Kawahara et al. (2018) for a phonetic account of these phonosemantic mappings).
The second feature is initial /p/ (“C1_p”). 15.25% (247/1620) of the ideophones in Kakehi etal. (1996) start with /p/ (e.g., pikaQ ‘flashing,’ piyopiyo ‘tweeting,’ potari ‘dripping’). This notablefrequency made Hamano (1998: 7) call /p/-initial ideophones “mimetics par excellence” (see also
Nasu (1999)). According to her, C1 /p/ is associated with the “taut surface” of something “light; small;fine” (p. 172).
The third feature is intervocalic /r/ (“C2_r”). 20.27% (106/523) of the bimoraic ideophoneroots in Kakehi et al. (1996) have /r/ in their second consonant slot (e.g., /bori/ ‘scratching hard,’/hura/ ‘staggering,’ /koro/ ‘a light object rolling,’ /nuru/ ‘slippery’) (Thompson 2017). According to
Hamano (1998: 173), C2 /r/ is associated with “rolling; fluid movement.”
The fourth feature is vowel assonance (“V1_V2”) or “monovocalicity” in Dingemanse’s(2011: 135) terms. Phonological harmony, including vowel assonance and tonal harmony, is common
in ideophones across languages (Childs 1994: 183; see also Section 2.2). In Japanese, 31.55%(165/523) of bimoraic ideophone roots in Kakehi et al. (1996) have the same vowel in their first andsecond vowel slots (e.g., /kiri/ ‘squealing,’ /dere/ ‘slovenly,’ /hara/ ‘fluttering,’ /toro/ ‘melting,’ /nuru/‘slippery’). Akita et al. (2013) propose that the vowel assonance in Japanese ideophones represents thestability of eventualities.
The fifth feature is the suffix type (“suffix”). Suffixed ideophones account for 44.15%(434/1239) of the bimoraic root-based ideophones in Kakehi et al. (1996) (CVCV-Q: 206 (16.63%);

5

CVCV-N: 99 (7.99%); CVCV-ri: 129 (10.41%); see also Nasu (2007)). The three suffixes signify theboundedness of events with subtle differences (Hamano 1998; Tamori & Schourup 1999; Toratani
2018; Jin 2019). /-Q/ is associated with forcefulness or vigorousness (e.g., koroQ ‘a light object rollingquickly once’). /-N/ is associated with reverberations, a lingering sensation, or a round shape (e.g.,
koroN ‘a light spherical object rolling once and stopping’). /-ri/ is associated with quietness orcalmness (e.g., korori ‘a light object rolling once quietly’).
All these features cover a large part of the sound-symbolic system of Japanese ideophones and,
therefore, can be safely considered systematic features. The present study examines how each of thesefeatures is related to the iconicity cline introduced in Section 2.1.

4

MethodWe used classification tree analysis to illuminate the relationship between the systematicity

and iconicity of ideophones. A classification tree is a type of decision tree that represents “a divisionof the data set into a series of non-overlapping subsets that jointly comprise the full data set” (Baayen
2008: 149). The algorithm checks all predictors and returns the best one (see also Eddington (2010);
Gries (2019)). This multifactorial modeling matches well with our research question, as it enables us
to take a holistic perspective on how different systematic features work together to constitute asound-symbolic lexicon.
The present dataset consists of 588 suffixed ideophones based on bimoraic roots (CVCV-Q:
286; CVCV-N: 132; CVCV-ri: 170). This is an extended list of Kakehi et al. (1996).4 We coded eachideophone in terms of the five systematic features (i.e., C1 voicing (whether to form a minimal pairbased on initial voicing), C1 /p/, C2 /r/, vowel assonance, suffix type) and the fine-grained semantic
types in Dingemanse (2012) (i.e., SOUND, MOVEMENT, VISUAL PATTERNS, OTHER SENSORYPERCEPTIONS, INNER FEELINGS AND COGNITIVE STATES).

For polysemous ideophones, we only

considered their putatively most common meanings. Table 1 presents part of the dataset.
Table 1

Part of the Dataset (588 suffixed ideophones were coded for their phonological, morphological,
and semantic properties.)

bataQ ‘thudding’burari ‘strolling’kiraN ‘glistening’C1 voicing
Yes (pataQ)
Yes (purari)
Yes (giraN)

Systematicity
C1 /p/
C2 /r/ Assonance
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
No

zaraQ ‘rough’Yes (saraQ)

No

Yes

Yes

Q

dokiQ ‘startled’

No (*tokiQ)

No

No

No

Q

Ideophone

SuffixQ
ri
N

Iconicity
MeaningSOUND
MOVEMENTVISUAL PATTERNSOTHER SENSORYPERCEPTIONSINNER FEELINGS &COGNITIVE STATES

Using the R packages rpart and partykit on R version 3.5.2 (R Core Team 2015), we
4

The dataset is available on the first author’s website.

6created classification trees that predict the semantic types (i.e., the degree of iconicity) of ideophones
from their systematic features. For the semantic types, we considered the coarse-grained (i.e.,
onomatopoeic or not) and fine-grained (i.e., Dingemanse’s) classifications separately, as the validity of
the latter is still under debate.

5

Results
The results revealed that the five systematic features of Japanese suffixed ideophones areeither positively or negatively correlated with iconicity and that C1 voicing and C2 /r/ play particularly
important roles in the sound-symbolic system. Figure 2 summarizes the correlations between thesystematic features and onomatopoeicity.
Figure 2

Correlations between the Systematic Features and Onomatopoeicity (C1 voicing, vowel

assonance, and CVCV-N exhibit a relative preference for onomatopoeic meanings, whereas C2 /r/ prefers
non-onomatopoeic meanings.)

100%

C1 voicing
217

50%
171
0%
yes

156

44

50%

0%

C2 /r/

139

32
yes

C1 /p/
69

100%

50

165

yes

no

241

96

119

yes

no

0%

(χ2(1) = 1.91, p = .17 (n.s.))

234

132
50%

0%

100%

assonance

304

50%

no

(χ2(1) = 27.72, p < .001)
100%

100%

(χ2(1) = 4.93, p < .05)

suffix type
65

194

114

50%
183

67

92

56

0%
no

(χ2(1) = 33.13, p < .001)

CVCV-Q

CVCV-NCVCV-ri(χ2(2) = 14.81, adjusted residual for /CVCV-N/ = 3.84, p < .001)

It was found that C1 voicing, vowel assonance, and the suffix /-N/ are more common in onomatopoeic
ideophones than in non-onomatopoeic ideophones, whereas C2 /r/ prefers non-onomatopoeic
ideophones.
Figure 3 is a classification tree that predicts onomatopoeicity from the five systematic features.
The tree was pruned at cp = 0.01860465 to minimize the error rate (see Baayen (2008: 151) for cp(cost-complexity parameter)). The results tell us that C2 /r/ is the most useful predictor of the7(non-)onomatopoeicity of suffixed ideophones and C1 voicing is the next. Specifically, suffixedideophones with C1 voicing pairs and vowel assonance and without C2 /r/ (the rightmost branch; e.g.,bataN ‘falling/shutting with a slam,’ pataN ‘falling/shutting with a snap’) are most likely to beonomatopoeic.
Figure 3Classification Tree Predicting Onomatopoeicity from the Systematic Features (This tree showsthat C2 /r/ is the primary feature associated with non-onomatopoeic meanings and ideophones without C2/r/ are further divided by C1 voicing, vowel assonance, and suffix type.)(rpart(onomatopoeicity~C1_voi+C1_p+C2_r+V1_V2+suffix,data=data,cp=0.01860465))
1
C2_r
yes

no

3
C1_voi
no

yes

5
V1_V2
no

6

yes

suffix

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

Node 9 (n = 97)

noNode 8 (n = 48)

no

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

yes

Node 7 (n = 118)

no

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

yes

Node 4 (n = 154)

no

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

yes

yes

no

Node 2 (n = 171)

N

yes

Q, ri

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

C1 voicing and C2 /r/, as well as C1 /p/ and suffix type, were also found relatively importantin the classification tree in Figure 4, which predicts the fine-grained degree of iconicity (i.e.,
Dingemanse’s (2012) semantic types) from the five systematic features (pruned at cp = 0.01212121).
This figure also suggests that the correlation between C1 voicing and iconicity is gradual. That is,
minimal pairs based on C1 voicing (the left four branches) are more common in ideophones withhigher iconicity. This becomes clearer in Figure 5, which shows the proportions of voicing-paired
ideophones across different semantic domains. As was the case for onomatopoeicity, there is a positive
correlation between the proportions and the degree of iconicity. A chi-squared test revealed asignificant group difference (χ2(3) = 33.05, p < .001). Specifically, it was found that voicing pairs are
particularly common in the MOVEMENT domain (adjusted residual = 4.82, p < .001) and particularly
uncommon in the INNER FEELINGS AND COGNITIVE STATES domain (adjusted residual = −4.07, p< .001).

8

Figure 4

Classification Tree Predicting Fine-Grained Iconicity from the Systematic Features (This treeshows that C1 voicing is the primary factor that predicts the semantic subtypes of non-onomatopoeic
ideophones and ideophones with C1 voicing pairs are further divided by C1 /p/, C2 /r/, and suffix type.)(rpart(crossmodal.meaning~C1_voi+C1_p+C2_r+V1_V2+suffix,data=data,cp=0.01212121))
1
C1_voi
yes

2

no

C1_p
yes

no

4
C2_r
yes

no

6
suffixN

Node 3 (n = 52)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

Node 5 (n = 81)

Node 7 (n = 18)

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
m v o i

Q, ri

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
m v o i

Node 8 (n = 64)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

m v o i

Node 9 (n = 156)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

m v o im v o i

Notes: m = MOVEMENT; v = VISUAL PATTERNS; o = OTHER SENSORY PERCEPTIONS; i = INNERFEELINGS AND COGNITIVE STATES.

In creating this tree, we excluded onomatopoeic

ideophones (N = 215) from the dataset to focus on the crossmodal part of the iconicity
hierarchy.

Figure 5

Proportions of C1 Voicing Pairs across Different Semantic Types of Suffixed Ideophones (Suchpairs are more common in semantic domains in which ideophones have higher iconicity.)

100%
80%

41
27

69

60%
40%

19
no

110
31

70

20%

yes
4

0%
MOVEMENTVISUALPATTERNSOTHER
INNER FEELINGSSENSORY& COGNITIVEPERCEPTIONSSTATES

Examples of paired and unpaired ideophones are given in (4).

9

(4)

a.

MOVEMENT:

buraQ ‘strolling’vs. puraQ ‘having a small stroll’gururi ‘going around’ vs. kururi ‘spinning’ziwari ‘inching’b.

vs. *siwari

VISUAL PATTERNS:c.

girari ‘glaring’vs. kirari ‘glistening’*zikaQvs. tikaQ ‘sparking’5

OTHER SENSORY PERCEPTIONS:

betoQ ‘sticky’vs. petoQ ‘a little bit sticky’

gusyori ‘soaking wet’ vs. *kusyorid.

INNER FEELINGS & COGNITIVE STATES:

guraQ ‘attracted’vs. kuraQ ‘a little bit dizzy/attracted’dokiQ ‘startled’vs. *tokiQ

zokuQ ‘thrilled’

vs. *sokuQ

The inner feeling meaning of guraQ in (4d), illustrated in (5), may not be fully acceptable to some
native speakers of Japanese. (This ideophone is usually used in a MOVEMENT meaning (‘shaking’).)This fact further confirms the limited productivity of paired ideophones with low iconicity.
(5)... howaito-gakuwari-narazero-en,white-student.discount-if 0-yen

kore-ni-wa

tyottothis-DAT-TOP

a.little.bit

guraQ-toki-tei-mas-u.

IDPH-QUOT

come-GER be-POL-NPST‘... White Student Fee (the name of a cellphone discount plan) is 0 yen—[I]’m a little bit
attracted to that.’(http://dennounikki.seesaa.net/category/2728660-1.html)6
In this section, we have shown that the five systematic features of suffixed ideophones inJapanese are correlated with their degree of iconicity in interesting ways. The two classification trees
suggest that C1 voicing and C2 /r/ play a particularly important role. In the next section, we discuss
general implications of these results.

6

Discussion
The classification tree analysis in the previous section revealed the particular significance of

C1 voicing and C2 /r/ in the iconicity-based hierarchical lexicon of Japanese ideophones. The present
findings are consistent with previous descriptive and experimental reports.
Initial voicing is a central phonetic feature in the sound-symbolic system of Japanese. ThisIn Japanese phonology, /ti/ [t͡ ɕi] is paired with /zi/ [d͡ ʑi~ʑi] for a historical reason. For example, ti ‘blood’ may
become zi in compounds, as in hana-zi ‘nosebleed.’
6This example was obtained through the NINJAL Web Japanese Corpus (NINJAL 2017).
5

10

idea receives support from numerous minimal pairs of ideophones based on C1 voicing (Section 3).
Moreover, Akita & McLean (to appear) argue that the centrality of C1 voicing manifests itself insound symbolism experiments. They report that Japanese speakers have greater sensitivity to C1
voicing in their sound-symbolic ratings than English speakers, who are more dependent on vowels(see also Saji et al. (2019)). Note that sound-symbolic pairs in the English lexicon make greater use ofvowel alternations, as in jingle/jangle, snip/snap, snitch/snatch, and stamp/stomp. Thus, the present
study provides additional, more direct evidence for the special status of C1 voicing in Japanese soundsymbolism.
In this connection, recent evidence suggests that voicing symbolism may not be as iconic as
Japanese researchers have assumed. To our knowledge, vowel-based ideophone paradigms, such as
the English one, appear to be more common than consonant-based ideophone paradigms acrosslanguages (see Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz (2001)). In fact, according to Maddieson (2010: 536), voicing isdistinctive in only 68.92% (439/637) of the languages he sampled. Furthermore, Haryu & Zhao (2007)
and Iwasaki et al. (2007) respectively show that Chinese and English speakers without priorknowledge of Japanese cannot sense the voicing symbolism of Japanese ideophones. These facts
suggest that the primary function of C1 voicing in Japanese sound symbolism is systematicity, rather
than iconicity. If this discussion is on the right track, the obtained positive correlation between C1
voicing and iconicity may indicate that the systematicity of C1 voicing facilitates the iconic
signification of ideophones and supports a relatively high part of the ideophone hierarchy.
A similar story may account for the observed importance of C2 /r/. As we saw in Section 3,
C2 /r/ is markedly frequent in Japanese ideophones. This deviant distribution led Thompson (2017) toanalyze this /r/ as “epenthetic” and sound-symbolically empty. In fact, it is often unclear whether
Hamano’s (1998) semantic generalization of C2 /r/ (i.e., “rolling; fluid movement”) can be applied toindividual ideophones, such as hiriQ ‘one’s skin stinging,’ kerakera ‘cackling with laughter,’ andnoronoro ‘slow’ (but see Hamano (2019)). If /r/ is the default realization of C2, we no longer need toworry about these possible exceptions. This epenthesis account may allow us to argue that C2 /r/, aswell as C1 voicing, is a primarily systematic feature. The observed negative correlation between C2 /r/and iconicity suggests that, unlike C1 voicing, C2 /r/ supports a relatively low part of the ideophonehierarchy.
The other three systematic features considered in this study are less likely to be assigned these
special roles. To the best of our knowledge, no related discussion has been made for C1 /p/ or vowel
assonance. Moreover, the morphological difference between /-Q/, /-N/, and /-ri/ appears to be lessimportant than their superordinate category “ideophonic suffixes.” All three types of suffixedideophones are associated with bounded aspect and together contrasted with reduplicated ideophones
for unbounded events (Akita 2009; Toratani 2018). Therefore, our next step will be a full-scale
investigation of Japanese ideophones, including reduplicated and other forms.

11

7

Conclusion
In this paper, we have demonstrated that different systematic features are correlated with

iconicity in different ways, reflecting their different roles in the system. Our classification tree analysis
indicated that initial voicing and C2 /r/ respectively support relatively “high” and “low” parts of thesound-symbolic system of Japanese ideophones as defined by the degree of iconicity. More generally,
we argued that not all sound-symbolic features are equally iconic. This critical view of soundsymbolism will help us to advance ideophone research on solid ground (Thompson & Do 2019).
Building upon the current study, future research will have to include other systematic featuresof Japanese ideophones, such as accent patterns and palatalization (Hamano 1998). Moreover,discussion on the (non-)iconicity of systematic features will benefit from crosslinguistic comparisonsof ideophone systems, as iconic signs are expected to be similar across languages (but see McLean(2019) cited in Section 2.2). Particular importance will be attached to a sound-symbolic comparison
between languages with and without many ideophones. Given that systematicity is more useful inlarge lexicons than in small lexicons (Gasser 2004; Monaghan et al. 2014), such a crosslinguisticcomparison may shed new light on the origin of systematicity in language.

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15音象徴の体系的側面―日本語の接尾辞型オノマトペを例に―
秋田 喜美・張 婧禕・玉岡 賀津雄
名古屋大学
要旨
オノマトペにおける音と意味の対応は，類像的かつ（統計的規則性を有するという意味で）体系的である。近年，言語学・心理学におけるオノマトペへの関心が高まりを見せる一方，
オノマトペの（非類像的で）体系的な側面は軽視されがちである。また，オノマトペにおける体系性と類像性の関係も未だ謎のままである。本稿では，日本語におけるいわゆる接尾辞型オノマトペ（例：バタッ，ブラリ，キラン）が持つ以下の体系的特徴を例に，各特徴と類像性の関係を探った。
i.

語頭有声性：有声・無声の最小対を持つ（例：バタッ vs. パタッ）ii.

語頭/p/（例：ピクッ，ポキッ，プルン）

iii.

語中/r/（例：ブラリ，キラン，ザラッ）

iv.

母音一致（例：バタッ，プツン，キリリ）v.

接尾辞タイプ（例：クラッ，フワン，キラリ）

分析方法としては，5 つの体系的特徴からオノマトペの類像性の程度を予測する分類木を用いた。類像性の指標としては，「音＞それ以外」（擬音語＞擬態語）という感覚モダリティに基づく階層に加え，「それ以外」を細分した「動き＞視覚的パタン＞他の感覚＞心情・認知状態」という Dingemanse (2012) の階層を用いた。
分析の結果，オノマトペの類像性を振り分ける要因として，語頭有声性と語中/r/が特に強く働いていることが判明した。具体的には，有声・無声の最小対は類像性の高いオノマトペ（例：ビリッ vs. ピリッ（紙などを破る音））に多い一方，語中/r/は類像性の低いオノマトペ（例：ピリリ（辛さよる舌の痛み））に多かった。この結果から，語頭有声性は類像性階層の上位部分を，語中/r/は下位部分を支える体系的特徴であることが示唆される。もしこれらの音韻的特徴の主たる機能が体系性であるとするなら、それらに対する音象徴的・類像的意味
づけは、従来考えられてきたほどには重要でないのかもしれない。

16