On the Third Kind of Imitative Words

Abstract

Although words stand, theoretically speaking, for their referents merely in an indirect relation, and the further advanced the language the more indirect their relations grow, yet some words are in themselves highly suggestive of their referents. Hence are noticed the so-called imitative words, i. e., echoisms and onomatopceias. In those kinds of words our Japanese notably abounds, but besides those we exceptionally indulge in another kind of imitative words: we have a good many words of Mode-Analogy as I freely call them. They are sometliins like such English words as “pall mall”, “pit-a-pat”, or “zigzag”.In closely examining about 700 imitative words of: these three kinds, I can not but complain of the prevailing misinterpretation of their real nature, and have come to take the liberty to suggest a reformed classification of them. They are to be assorted in these three kinds: Imitanturs, c. 170, Interpretanturs, c. 80, and Transferranturs, c. 450. The last are nothing than the so-called Mode-Analogy words. They are invented by, as it were, ql.“translating” anything but acoustic phenomena into sounds. This third kind may be subdivided into A. of the Impression by Object and B of the Impression by Subject, each being viewed under two headings:
A, (1) of Visual Impression, c. 180, (2) of General Impression, c. 180;
to B (1) of Sensory & Visceral Impression? c. 40, (2) of the Reflection, of Mental State, c. 50.
The corrected interpretation of the nature of Mode-Analogy words naturally rejects the prevailing name for them, “Gitai-go”. The name “words imitating some states or appearances” as they use it is not comprehensive enough. ^sn>Moreover, zoologists have “long used the word” “Gitai”, and that in the sense of imitative state or appearance not of “imitating other states or appearances” as linguistidians invertedly intend to designate by it Learning requires as little confusion vas possible in conception?