A Review of Studies Concerning Onomatopoeias in Young Children and a Prospect

Abstract

Young children utter a lot of onomatopoeias in their daily life. This paper reviewed previous studies concerning onomatopoeias in young children and discussed the direction in which future studies on this theme are expected.

As a result, it is clear that studies with regard to onomatopoeias uttered by young children have been conducted on the basis of the following kinds of investigations. First, investigations of the increase and/or decrease in onomatopoeic expressions with young children’s development. Second, surveys focused on the linguistic forms and functions of onomatopoeias. Third, investigations concerning the roles of onomatopoeias in the life and play of young children. With regard to this last, it has been shown that the roles have been investigated from a variety of perspectives, such as 1. acquisition of language, 2. facilitation of physical movement, 3. grasp and representation of objects, 4. representation in pretend plays, and 5. formation of relationships among young children.

Based on the above, this paper proposed, as a future prospect, to take up young children’s act of uttering onomatopoeias from the viewpoint of their (young children’s) interactions and to clarify the real aspects of onomatopoeias in their interactions. We expected that in proceeding such investigations it would be important to conduct contextualized researches and effective to focus on pretend plays among young children. We believe that this prospect of ours will provide some clues to understanding not only language and expression in early childhood but also formation of relationships among young children.