A diachronic analysis of ideophones in Chinese (2016)
<p>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 (<i>diezi </i>疊字) or semi-reduplicated words (<i>shuangsheng </i>雙聲 or <i>dieyun </i>疊韻) (Sun 1999). From a more functional yet also very traditional perspective they have been described under onomatopoeia (<i>xiangshengci </i>象聲詞) and ‘state words’ (<i>zhuangtaici </i>狀態詞).</p><p>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. <i>wangwang </i>汪汪 ‘woof woof’) but also those depicting movement (<i>paihuai </i>徘徊 ‘pace back and forth’), vision (<i>momo </i>莫莫 ‘luxuriant’), time (<i>chichi </i>遲遲 ‘slow’), inner feelings (<i>youyou </i>悠悠 ‘anxious’), evaluation (<i>yaotiao </i>窈窕 ‘virtuous’) etc.</p><p>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.</p>
