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This volume explores new frontiers in the linguistic study of iconic lexemes known as ideophones, mimetics, and expressives. A large part of the literature on this long-neglected word class has been dedicated to the description of its sound symbolism, marked morphophonology, and grammatical status in individual languages. Drawing on data from Asian (especially Japanese), African, American, and European languages, the twelve chapters in this volume aim to establish common grounds for theoretical and crosslinguistic discussions of the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, acquisition, and variation of iconic lexemes. Not only researchers who are interested in linguistic iconicity but also theoretical linguists and typologists will benefit from the updated insights presented in each study.

Iconicity (Linguistics) --- Visual communication. --- Mimetic words. --- Language and languages --- Onomatopoeia --- Graphic communication --- Imaginal communication --- Pictorial communication --- Communication --- Iconism (Linguistics) --- Icons (Linguistics) --- Linguistics --- Semiotics --- Mimetic words --- Visual communication --- E-books

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This paper reexamines the notion of diagrammatic iconicity in grammar, i.e. the isomorphism of relational structure across form and meaning. After a quick survey of the various definitions of diagrammatic iconicity, some illustrations are given from coordinating constructions. It is shown that grammatical (a)symmetry in the expression of complex events corresponds to conceptual (a)symmetry. Next, diagrammatic iconicity is examined from an evolutionary viewpoint. Based on two considerations, namely, (i) that diagrammatic iconicity in grammar presupposes the bifurcation of form and meaning, and (ii) that analogical mapping between linguistic form and cognitive experience is a product of highly evolved cognitive capacity, it is claimed that diagrammatic iconicity is by no means "primitive" but a crucial species-specific trait of human language.

Iconicity (Linguistics) --- Semiotics. --- Cognitive grammar. --- Cognitive linguistics --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Psycholinguistics --- Semeiotics --- Semiology (Linguistics) --- Semantics --- Signs and symbols --- Structuralism (Literary analysis) --- Iconism (Linguistics) --- Icons (Linguistics) --- Linguistics --- Semiotics

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This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the lexicon and word formation processes in contemporary Japanese, with particular emphasis on their typologically characteristic features and their interactions with syntax and semantics. Through contacts with a variety of languages over more than two thousand years of history, Japanese has developed a complex vocabulary system that is composed of four lexical strata: (i) native Japanese, (ii) mimetic, (iii) Sino-Japanese, and (iv) foreign (especially English). This hybrid composition of the lexicon, coupled with the agglutinative character of the language by which morphology is closely associated with syntax, gives rise to theoretically intriguing interactions with word formation processes that are not easily found with inflectional, isolate, or polysynthetic types of languages.

Japanese language --- Koguryo language --- Word formation --- Lexicology --- Japanese. --- Language Contact. --- Lexicon. --- Linguistics.