Iconicity ratings across the Japanese lexicon: A comparative study with English

Abstract

Abstract Iconicity is a resemblance between form and meaning grounded in perceptuo-motor analogy. In speech, iconicity is understood as words “sounding like what they mean.” Studies on English and Spanish use ratings to identify words speakers consider iconic. Perry et al. (2015) show that English onomatopoeia are rated highest, followed by adjectives/verbs > nouns > function words. Our study replicates this for Japanese but, owing to additional variables, yields more nuanced findings. Word-class aside, Japanese speakers are more likely to rate words as iconic if they are an (1) ideophone > (2) Yamato/native prosaic word > or (3) non-Yamato prosaic word. For comparison, we reanalyzed English ratings from Perry et al. (2015), and found neither strata (Germanic, Latinate, French) nor historically iconic etymology had a significant effect. With these factors in mind, we propose that ratings reflect a word’s relationship to sensory information rather than iconicity.