Kimi Akita – författare

The Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language offers a comprehensive guide to the role that iconicity - resemblance between form and meaning - plays in all modes of languages, on all levels of language, and in all aspects of language. The originally semiotic notion of iconicity has gained widespread attention beyond the field of linguistics; this volume thus brings together research exploring a wide range of topics in iconicity from different perspectives. It explores the history of iconicity and its place in linguistic theory, in particular how the idea of iconicity has developed over time and how it has recently begun to once again influence thinking and theorizing about language. By presenting a very broad spectrum of iconicity, the chapters provide greater recognition of its influence and present a clearer picture of its scope across the languages of the world. They also offer a critical discussion of the notion of iconicity, as its parameters, dimensions, and operationalizations are not always easy to define. The volume will appeal to linguists of all theoretical persuasions, but also to a wider audience outside linguistics proper, including researchers and students in the fields of literature, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

Mimetic words, also known as ‘sound-symbolic words’, ‘ideophones’ or more popularly as ‘onomatopoeia’, constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children’s early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.