The linguistic integration of japanese ideophones and its typological implications

Abstract

This article proposes that two linguistic systems (that is, two languages or registers) with differentdegreesofmorphosyntacticintegrationofideophonesmayapplythesamerestrictionson ideophonesindifferentways.InStudy1,theauthorshowsquantitativelythatthesentence-type restrictions reported for ideophones in several languages also constrain Japanese ideophones, buttoalesserextent.InStudy2,theauthorarguesthattwopreviouslyidentifiedrestrictionson Japanese ideophonic verbs appear to apply only partially to ideophonic verbs in baby talk and highly playful discourse. It is concluded that the strengthof these restrictions is negatively correlatedwith theoveralldegreeofmorphosyntacticintegrationofideophonesinthelanguageor register.