Lmst

New! A multi-methods toolkit for ideophone research, w/ Bonnie McLean

⛓️‍💥 :OpenAccess: PDF https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3644631_1/component/file_3644632/McLean%20Dingemanse%202025%20Multi-methods%20toolkit%20for%20documentary%20research%20on%20ideophones.pdf

On the blog: https://ideophone.org/new-methods-for-ideophone-research/

#ideophones #iconicity

I shouldn't have looked up the #Ideophones article on Wikipedia 🫠

bristling with exoticism and anglocentrism, deeply wrong in many places (least common word class!? sound imitation?!) and generally just subpar.

(yes I know anyone including me can edit wikipedia, I was once an admin and contributed at least 100 articles 2004-2007. To avoid any COI I wouldn't edit topics where I've become an author of primary sources myself)

@linguistics #lingcomm #wikipedia

New preprint! Triangulating iconicity, with Stella Punselie & Bonnie McLean (Uppsala) https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z9a4e

We combine three ways of looking at the iconicity of 239 #ideophones from 5 languages: (i) coding structural correspondences between form and meaning; (ii) collecting subjective iconicity ratings, and (iii) relating these to performance in guessing tasks. Triangulation contributes to an empirically grounded, theoretically informed, experimentally robust understanding of #iconicity.

Two panel figure showing the relation between iconicity ratings and cumulative iconicity. Colourful dots where every dot represents a single ideophone. A: Distribution of mean iconicity ratings, showing that ideophones span the range of 1-5, with most of them occupying the middle range (based on around 20 raters per ideophone). B: Distribution of ratings by cumulative iconicity, showing a stepwise increase in iconicity ratings and a narrowing distribution of variance as cumulative iconicity goes up.

Schematic showing the logic of the triangulation method. In panel A, diagrams of the sound structure of a Korean word 'tugun dugun' and the sound of a human heartbeat show possible analogies between the two, e.g. the repeated macrostructure and the disyllabic substructure mapping on the two heart sounds. In panel B, the ideophone sound shown with a rating scale, representing a participant rating the word for form-meaning fit. In panel C, the outcomes of a guessing experiment for 240 ideophones with one dot highlighted representing this Korean ideophone for 'heartbeat', showing th it is guessed very well overall. The existence of cumulative structural analogies (A) helps explain why people this form high in iconicity (B) and why it was easily guessable by a different set of people in earlier experiments (C).

@dingemansemark I had a discussion with Corrine Occhino and Vadim Kimmelman recently about how to discuss signs with (presumably) accidental similar form and meaning between two unrelated signed languages. We were wondering if there is any term you are aware of for when ideophones are similar in form and meaning across to spoken languages? #ideophones #linguistics

Finally out! Two chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Word Classes:
📖 Ideophones :OpenAccess: PDF https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3556597_1/component/file_3556598/Dingemanse_2023_Ideophones_OUP_withbib.pdf
📖 Interjections :OpenAccess: PDF https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3556600_1/component/file_3556601/Dingemanse_2023_Interjections_OUP_withbib.pdf

#linguistics #ideophones #interjections

Cover page of "Ideophones", a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Word Classes

Cover page of "Interjections", a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Word Classes

‘Pachi pachi’ or ‘kachi kachi’? Japan launches foreigners’ guide to tricky world of onomatopoeia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/15/mie-prefecture-guide-pachi-pachi-or-kachi-kachi-a-foreigners-guide-to-the-tricky-world-of-japans-onomatopoeia
#linguistics #ideophones #mimetics

The cover of E Kara Oto ga Wakaru Hon (understanding sounds using pictures), showing a scene at the dentist where onomatopoeia (or actually mimetics / ideophones) are frequently used to communicate detailed sensory perceptions

Part II of my peer review of this preprint is now online. I call into doubt the scientific utility of seeing ideophones as a “linguistic fossil” (a relic frozen in time, an archaism, a remnant of what once was), and note how such a construal risks imposing tunnel vision — precisely what we see, I think, in this preprint https://ideophone.org/pitfalls-of-fossil-thinking-a-peer-review-ii/ #linguistics #HistoryOfLinguistics #ideophones

🎉 New paper led by the amazing Bonnie McLean! "Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon"
:OpenAccess: :doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2023.9

This is Bonnie's 1st PhD paper (w/ Michael Dunn & myself) and it's #openscience all the way: open access paper with all materials on OSF & with a :python: #python package `icotools` to boot

#iconicity #ideophones @linguistics