Comprehension of mimetics by adult native speakers of Japanese

Linguistics traditionally regards the relationship between a word’s sound and its meaning as arbitrary; words which systematically relate sound and meaning – ‘sound-symbolic’ or ‘mimetic’ words – have been regarded as peripheral (Imai and Kita, 2014); however, increasingly, research has found that languages such as Japanese have highly developed and grammatically integrated lexical strata devoted to mimetic words (Hamano, 1998; Tsujimura, 2001, 2005; Tsujimura and Deguchi, 2003). In Japanese, Akita (2010) has posited that among mimetics that denote internal states (‘psychomimes’), three categories can be identified based on semantic, morphosyntactic, and syntactic properties. With respect to syntax, Akita proposes that compatibility with locus noun phrases constitutes a syntactic constraint on these mimetic classes’ naturalness that can serve to discriminate the three classes. In this experiment, we sought to find empirical evidence for this claim by way of native speakers’ judgment of the naturalness of mimetics in sentences according to a five-point scale. Our results provided empirical support for Akita’s claim, indicating that her categorization might indeed be a psychological reality for native speakers of Japanese.