Onomatopoeia and metonymy

Onomatopoeia and metonymy¹
Réka Benczes & Lilla Petronella Szabó
Corvinus University of Budapest


Abstract
When it comes to onomatopoeia, it is often claimed that such words are the epitome of sound symbolism, as the link between form and meaning is felt to be “natural”. Yet, this is quite far from the case: onomatopoeic words do need to conform to the phonological and morphological restrictions of a respective language. Due to these restrictions, onomatopoeic forms can vary greatly with regard to the degree to which they are felt to be imitative of a particular sound, making it quite a challenge to succinctly delimit or define this category of words. Accordingly, the paper investigates the role of onomatopoeic formations in English and provides a novel definition of onomatopoeia that is able to encompass both novel and lexicalised examples. In order to do so, the paper advocates a metonymy-based approach to onomatopoeic forms.
While it is often stated within cognitive linguistics that metonymy is fundamental in language and cognition (see Barcelona 2019 for a recent overview), few researchers have done so much to justify this claim as Antonio Barcelona. The present paper is in honour of this lifelong achievement.


Keywords: English, onomatopoeia, metonymy, echoic, imitative


1. Introduction
How prevalent are onomatopoeic forms in language? In Bredin’s (1996) view, it is a fundamental feature of language that speakers are naturally inclined to, in the drive to fit meaning and sound to one another. Brown (1958), however, had a starkly opposite view on the significance of onomatopoeia within language and conceptualization, claiming that “we do not usually expect speech to represent or imitate. Its dominant function is conventional reference and that is what we expect unless directed to look for something else. There may, however, be non-laboratory situations in which we are prepared for onomatopoeia and phonetic symbolism” (p. 138). Other researchers have also raised the idea that certain environments (or “non-laboratory situations”, to quote Brown’s 1958 expression) are more conducive to onomatopoeia than others. These include especially child-directed speech and infant speech (Rūke-Draviņa 1976), persuasive speech (Brown 1979; Skorupa and Dubovičienė 2015), poetry (Ullmann 1962; Hrushovski 1980), and colloquial speech and slang (Oswalt 1994; Guynes 2014).
A further question regarding onomatopoeic forms concerns their place in word-formation. More specifically, where can onomatopoeia be placed within the realm of word-formation and which underlying conceptual mechanisms are at play in the formation of onomatopoeic words? As demonstrated by Barcelona (2004, 2011, 2012, 2019), Brdar and Brdar-Szabó (2013, 2014) and Brdar (2017), metonymy plays a fundamental role in numerous word-formation processes, including compounding, affixation and conversion. In his comprehensive account on the role of metonymy in word-formation, Brdar (2017, p. 3) considers onomatopoeia as a lexicalization strategy, on a par with word manufacture, lexical borrowing or word-formation (understood by Brdar as the process of combining bound or free morphemes to create new words). Onomatopoeic words are special in the sense that they represent a combination of sounds, not morphemes (see also Katamba 1994), although the morph-like quality of the sounds (i.e., their expressive quality, as in the case of phonesthemes) is hard to deny (Marchand 1969, p. 319). What makes onomatopoeic words thus especially intriguing is that on closer inspection, they do bear some resemblance to various well-established word-formation strategies, such as compounding or blending (ibid.); thus, we should not exclude the possibility that their emergence is influenced by exactly those cognitive processes – metonymy in particular – that operate in the case of more mainstream word-formation patterns. In this paper, we suggest that – similarly to other word-formation processes – onomatopoeic forms are also driven by metonymy.
Following the Introduction, section 2 provides an overview of onomatopoeic forms in the English language. Section 3 discusses the role of linguistic convention in the formation of onomatopoeic forms. In section 4, we formulate a novel, metonymy-based definition of onomatopoeia. Finally, section 5 concludes.