Collocation Patterns of Sound-symbolic Words and Verbs in Corpora of a Newspaper and Novels

Abstract

In order to investigate diversity versus uniformity in collocations of Japanese sound-symbolic words (i.e., onomatopoeia and mimesis) with verbs, the present study examined three hypotheses regarding the usage of 28 sound-symbolic words taken from large corpora. First, differences in register were analyzed by comparing a newspaper corpus with a corpus of novels. Collocation patterns of sound-symbolic words with verbs showed a greater diversity in novels than in the newspaper. Second, polysemic effects of sound-symbolic words were examined by looking at the extent of diversity and uniformity in their collocations with verbs. The results of a comparative analysis between 14 monosemic and 14 polysemic sound-symbolic words indicated that polysemy affected the diversity of collocation patterns in the newspaper corpus, but not those of the novel corpus. Considering the tendency for sound-symbolic words to show greater diversity in novels than in the newspaper, writers of novels appear more likely to combine a sound-symbolic word with a variety of verbs, with the result that the collocations of sound-symbolic words are not restricted by the number of meanings as defined by a dictionary. Third, 28 sound-symbolic words were clustered according to the diversity versus uniformity of their word collocation patterns with verbs. The results for these clusters suggested the possibility that sound-symbolic words related to human emotions have strong ties with specific verbs.