A diachronic analysis of ideophones in Chinese (2016)

Ideophones, defined by Dingemanse (2012) as phonologically and morphologically “marked words that depict some form of sensory image”, occur very often in Chinese (Li Jing’er 2007; Zhao Aiwu 2008). Traditional Chinese studies on the morphology of these instances of ‘vivid language’ have classified them as reduplicated words (diezi 疊字) or semi-reduplicated words (shuangsheng 雙聲 or dieyun 疊韻) (Sun 1999). From a more functional yet also very traditional perspective they have been described under onomatopoeia (xiangshengci 象聲詞) and ‘state words’ (zhuangtaici 狀態詞).

However, adopting the cross-linguistic concept of ‘ideophones’ and applying it to Chinese enables a broader scope of similar words, while at the same time yielding more fine-grained semantic distinctions between these words, viz. not only including those words that depict sound (e.g. wangwang 汪汪 ‘woof woof’) but also those depicting movement (paihuai 徘徊 ‘pace back and forth’), vision (momo 莫莫 ‘luxuriant’), time (chichi 遲遲 ‘slow’), inner feelings (youyou 悠悠 ‘anxious’), evaluation (yaotiao 窈窕 ‘virtuous’) etc.

My research is focused on describing both the synchronic properties of ideophones at a given point and seeing how they evolve diachronically. I believe attending the summer school in Chinese Digital Humanities (Leiden, July 2016) can help my research tremendously; I am particularly interested in the workshops on text markup, text mining and establishing a database for quantitative analysis. Even though I have got a very basic background of using statistical software such as R and Excel, I am convinced the seminars and discussions of the summer school will act as a catalyst for further research.