This study aims to examine how onomatopoeia and mimetics are actually applied in the Korean language. Atotal of 124 pieces of literary articles made up of 111 fairy tales and 13 short stories all written by Suh Jung Ohwere selected as the subjects of ...
This study aims to examine how onomatopoeia and mimetics are actually applied in the Korean language. Atotal of 124 pieces of literary articles made up of 111 fairy tales and 13 short stories all written by Suh Jung Ohwere selected as the subjects of analysis. The study carefully looked into theconcept, the function, the structural characteristics, and the application to general language of onomatopoeia and mimetics.
Firstly, the study examined the three forms - individual form, the homophony repetition form, and the assonancerepetition form - of independent onomatopoeia and mimetics. As a result, 23% of onomatopoeia were of the individual form, 64% of the homophony repetition form, and 13% of the assonance repetition form. Thus onomatopoeia was mainly used in the form of the homophony repetition form, followed by the individual form, and finally the assonance repetition form. On the other hand, 74% of mimetics were of the individual form, 17% of the homophony repetition form, and 7% of the assonance repetition form which means mimetics was mainly used in its individual form, followed by the homophony repetition form, and finally the assonance repetition form.
Secondly, from the spreads of the individual form and repetitionit could first be concluded that the individual form was mainly composed by the second syllables since the individual form constituted of 29% of first syllables, 37% of second syllables, 18% of third syllables, and 16% of other syllables. The spread of the homophony repetition form revealedthat the homophony repetition form was made up of 33.5% of first syllable repetition, 62.5% of second syllable repetition, 4% of third syllable repetition and therefore had the greatest second syllable repetition percentage. The assonance repetition form showed 4.54% of consonant replacement form, 13.63% of vowel replacement form, 34.09% of syllable replacement form, and 47.72% of partial repetition formthrough which it could be confirmed that by nature of the fairy tale text, there were many arbitrarily produced words.
Thirdly, it could beseen that the onomatopoeia and mimetics of the assonance repetition form was markedly different in structure when compared to other repetition form and also implied a different meaning within context. Onomatopoeia and mimetics of the assonance repetition form were grouped into 1) the case where the meaning was contained on one side and 2)the case where the meaning was contained on both sides.
Fourthly, the study examined the general use of onomatopoeia and mimetics. In the case of onomatopoeia it functions as 1)a pronounthat embellishes the noun; 2)a quotation where the onomatopoeia quotation does not use the quotation marks and instead is presented as a sound that is recorded and therefore is quoted with a strong realistic nature; 3)an adverb that embellishes a verb; 4)an independent word; 5)a predicate of a phrase, a pre-noun within a phrase, or an adverbial phrase by the process of deriving a verb with derived suffices such as ‘-gu ri da, -ha da, -ee da, -dae da’.
Mimetics, like onomatopoeia, is used as a quotation. 1) The conceptual meaning when used as a quotation or an adverb is identical, but the expressional value is more direct when the quotational form is used. 2) A mimetic word is also actively derived into a verb or adjective by the derived suffix and can function as the pre-noun, adverbial phrase, or predicate of the sentence. It can be known that ‘-ha-’is derived into an adjective and ‘-gu ri,’ ‘-ee-’ are derived into a verb. There are many examples where the derived suffix ‘-ha-’ is added to a mimetic word to derive it into an adjective. However, it’s hard to find examples where ‘onomatopoeia + -ha-’ derived into an adjective.
Other than the characteristics seen above, the socialization of personal words is easily applied to onomatopoeia and mimetics. Thus implied meanings are easily accepted and the grammar used in fairy tales allows wide expansion of such usage.