Prosodic Structure of Reduplicated Mimetics in Japanese

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  • 重複形オノマトペの韻律構造
  • チョウフクケイ オノマトペ ノ インリツ コウゾウ

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Previous studies of Japanese reduplicated mimetics have identified many morphological variations among them. For instance, Amanuma (1974) classifies them into 15 patterns. This paper, on the other hand, proposes that those seemingly numerous variations can be classified into (as few as) two major groups in terms of their prosodic structure. The most typical form like "pika-pika" belongs to head-initial group (type-A) and has three striking properties : (1) Accent is always assigned on the left-most syllable of the word, (2) The number of reduplicant is strictly fixed, and (3) The left-most foot is identified as a prosodic head. In addition, type-A mimetics are generated with a specific prosodic structure, called Bipodic Template (Poser 1990). The other group (type-B) consists of head-final mimetics such as "pika-pikaQ". Mimetics in this group show behavior completely opposite to that of type-A mimetics with respect to the properties (1)-(3) listed above. This article attempts to show phonological and morphological differences between two types of reduplicated mimetics, focusing on their accent, foot structure, and word formation process.

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