Onomatopoeic words may be subdivided into two kinds: primary onomatopoeia and secondary onomatopoeia • Primary onomatopoeia Primary onomatopoeia means the imitation of sound by sound. Here the sound is truly an “echo to the sense”: the reference itself is an acoustic experience which is more or less closely imitated by the phonetic structure of the word. The terms like crack, growl, hum, roar, squeak, squeal, whizz and a great many others fall into this category.
2. Semantic motivation Semantic motivation refers to the mental association suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. It explains the connection between the literal sense and figurative sense of the word. When we say the mouth of a river, we associate the opening part of the river with the mouth of a human being or an animal. When we speak of the foot of the mountain, we are comparing the lower part of the mountain to the foot of a humatopoeic motivation Words motivated phonetically are called onomatopoeic or phonetic or echoic words, whose pronunciation suggests the meaning. They show a close relation of sound to sense, whereas non-onomatopoeic words do not show any such relationship. Many onomatopoeic words imitate natural sounds, such as the cries of animals or the noises that resemble these associated with the object or action to be named, or that seem suggestive of its qualities.
• Some onomatopoeic words are not completely motivated as pointed out by R. Quirk: • “…And even these (echoic words) are conventional to quite a large extent. The word mutter does not mean „mutter‟ in German or French, even though these language also have onomatopoeic words for „mutter‟: murren and marmotter respectively.If you throw a stone into water, the sound you hear is by no means as when you say „splash‟.” (Quirk 1963:43) •
• The number of such words in any language is small, but their existence is important because they show a popular desire for a sound-symbol to have as close a relation to its meaning as possible. Such a desire is present in every linguistic community. • The number of such words in any language is small, but their existence is important because they show a popular desire for a sound-symbol to have as close a relation to its meaning as possible. Such a desire is present in every linguistic community.
Some of these onomatopoeic words have certain elements in common; in Bloomfield’s words, there is “a system of initial and final root-forming morphemes, of vague significance”, with which the “intense, symbolic connotation” of such words is associated. For example, the sounds /sn / may express three types of experiences: “breath-noise” (sniff, snuff, snore, snort), “quick separation or movement” (snip, snap, snatch), and “creeping” (snake, snail, sneak, snoop). Final groups have similar functions: -are suggests “big light or noise” as in blare, flare, glare, stare; -ump suggests “protuberance” as in bump, chump, clump, dump and “heavy fall” as in dump, crump, flump, flump, pump, slump, thump.
• Here the sense is truly the echo of the sound. Examples are: the bow-wow or woof-woof of a dog, the meow-meow of a cat, the moo of a cow, the roar of a lion, the coo of a pigeon, the hiss of a serpent, the hum of bees, and quack of a duck; the boom of a cannon, the crack of a pistol shot, the clang of the firebell, the clash of weapons, the bang of a door and the rumble of thunder.
现代英语词汇学（第三章）
Motivation What is motivation? Motivation refers to the connection between word-symbol and its sense. From the point of view of motivation, the great majority of English words are non-motivated, since they are conventional, arbitrary symbols. However, there is a small number of words that can be described as motivated, that is, a direct connection between the symbol and its sense can be readily observed. Based on our textbook, motivation may arise in three major ways:
• Poets and great writers often use the sound of words to achieve very expressive effect as can be seen in the following poem: • “ The ice was here, the ice was there , • The ice was in all around: • It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, • Like noise in a swound .” • (Note: swound=woond: a bewitched state; trance)
Another interesting feature of onomatopoeia patterns is that they often work by vowel alteration. By substituting one vowel for another one can express different noises: snip—snap, sniff—snuff, flip—flap— flop. Akin to this tendency are reduplicated words and phrases like riff-raff, wishy-washy, tit for tat, ticktock, click-clack. It should be noted that many onomatopoeic forms are based on alterations of not vowels but of initial consonants: higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, namby-pamby, roly-poly, etc. Fairly recent onomatopoeic formations are: hi-fi, walkie-talkie, heebie-jeebies, li-lo, flower-power, hokeycokey, itsy-bitsy, swing-wing, etc.