37.2544, Reviews: Onomatopoeia: Lívia Körtvélyessy (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2544. Mon Aug 03 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2544, Reviews: Onomatopoeia: Lívia Körtvélyessy (2025)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 03-Aug-2026
From: Monica Vasileanu [monica.vasileanu at gmail.com]
Subject: Lívia Körtvélyessy (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-3533

Title: Onomatopoeia
Subtitle: The Colorful World of Sounds
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/phonetics-and-phonology/onomatopoeia-colorful-world-sounds?format=HB&isbn=9781009438018

Author(s): Lívia Körtvélyessy

Reviewer: Monica Vasileanu

SUMMARY
Lívia Körtvélyessy’s monograph Onomatopoeia: The Colorful World of
Sounds, builds on previous works of the author, such as Körtvélyessy
(2020) and Körtvélyessy & Štekauer (2024). While the volume edited in
2024 puts together separate descriptive studies of onomatopoeia in 88
languages, the current monograph takes an integrated cross-linguistic
approach, contrasting data from 124 languages. The book is primarily
aimed at language researchers, especially typologists, semioticians,
phoneticians, and morphologists, but is relevant also for cognitive
scientists and anthropologists.
Onomatopoeia: The Colorful World of Sounds (xix + 398 pp.) comprises
nine chapters, including introduction and conclusions, with the
questionnaires used to collect the data appended. The Introduction
(pp. 1–33) contains a brief overview of the previous research on
onomatopoeias and argues against their status of peripheric elements,
a bias originating from the study of Indo-European languages.
Furthermore, the author provides a detailed account of the research
methodology employed. Language sampling followed the division of
languages in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) into six
macro-areas: Africa, Australia, Eurasia, North America, South America,
and Papunesia, as well as genetic criteria. For each language, an
expert was asked to complete two data sheets, the first one regarding
the status of onomatopoeia research in the respective language, and
the second one aimed at collecting the onomatopoeia available for 16
classes of sound events. Sound events are subsumed to either natural
or artifact sounds.
Chapter 2, Defining onomatopoeia (pp. 34–46), distinguishes primary
onomatopoeias, i.e., direct sound imitations, from secondary
onomatopoeias, which include derivatives, metaphorical or metonymical
extensions or modifications of the primary type. The author argues
against the conflation of onomatopoeias and interjections, as attested
in many European languages, since the former rely on causal relations,
whereas the latter do not. The status of onomatopoeia differs across
languages: while in Ket and Beria they are subsumed to ideophones, in
Tartar and Wichi they are considered to be a separate class, and in
Ngarla they are thought to be nominals. This fragmented picture
testifies to the diversity of onomatopoeia in the world’s languages.
Chapter 3, Onomatopoeias as linguistic signs (pp. 47–85), focuses on
the semiotic aspects of onomatopoeias, referring to the linguistic
sign models of Peirce (1998) and Saussure (1959). The author argues
that the distinction between motivation and arbitrariness should be
replaced with two oppositions: causality versus noncausality and
motivation versus lexicalization. The author concludes that
onomatopoeias are “prototypically nonmotivated by other linguistic
signs, causal due to imitative iconicity, partly conventionalized due
to linguistic (phonological system of a language) as well as
extralinguistic reasons (e.g., the coiner’s auditive-imitative
skills)” (p. 66).
The empirical material collected from the 124 languages is analyzed in
Chapter 4, Prototypical features of onomatopoeia (pp. 86–201), in
which the author identifies the characteristics of onomatopoeic words
as opposed to non-onomatopoeic ones at the phonological,
morphological, syntactic, semantic, word-formation, and sociopragmatic
level. Salient characteristics include: potential for vowelless
syllables, a preferred CV or CVC syllable structure, iconic
reduplication, frequent syntactic isolation, almost exclusive use in
declarative affirmative sentences, a dramaturgic function in
storytelling and extensive use in child language. The aforementioned
characteristics are prototypical and may not appear in all the world’s
languages. Other features are universal and derive from the definition
of onomatopoeia: from a semantic point of view, all items belong to
the cognitive category of SOUND, and in terms of word-formation, they
are not derived from other onomatopoeia, but can serve as bases for
subsequent formations.
Chapter 5, Onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (pp. 202–241), views the
onomatopoeia formation act as an adaptation of a continuum of
nonarticulated sounds (e.g., nature or animal sounds) to the limited
repertoire of phonemes in each language. The cross-linguistic analysis
allows the identification of phonestemes, i.e. sounds or groups of
sounds that systematically associate with a meaning, constantly used
across languages in the formation of onomatopoeia.  For instance,
plosives convey brief or single sound events, such as cracking or
thunder, and /k/ is frequently employed to mark an abrupt end of the
sound event. Furthermore, phonestemes are integrated in the
onomasiological model of onomatopoeia formation (Körtvélyessy 2024) at
the onomatological level, where they are used to represent the
individual sound categories at the onomasiological level (such as
Loudness or Repetition) following the Sound-to-Seme Assignment
Principle.
Chapter 6, Cross-linguistic onomatopoeic patterns (pp. 242–287),
examines the better represented sound events, such as SPLASH, DOG
BARKING or GUN SHOOTING, in 88 languages, with the aim of identifying
the dominant patterns in terms of number of syllables, syllable
structure, type of reduplication and lengthening. Moreover, the
recurrence of certain phonestemes in onset, nucleus and coda positions
for certain sound events suggests that at least some of these are more
widespread than previously thought, and potentially universal.
A quantitative approach is adopted in Chapter 7, Richness of languages
in onomatopoeias by sound type and source (pp. 288–310). The sixteen
sound types identified in the introduction are not evenly represented
in the world’s languages. The author concludes that natural sound
types have richer onomatopoeic representations than artifact types,
and among the former animal and human sounds are best represented,
illustrating the cognitive salience of these sources.
Since in 48 of the examined languages onomatopoeias are subsumed to
the class of ideophones, the relation between the two groups is
discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, Onomatopoeias versus Ideophones
(pp. 311–340). Ideophones are defined as words that vividly depict
sensory perception (e.g., shape, size, colors, motion) and
psychological feelings. Thus, ideophones are based on cross-modal
iconicity, as they auditively evoke colors, movements, sounds and so
on, unlike onomatopoeias, which are monomodal imitations of real-world
sounds. Although the two classes share a number of salient
characteristics, such as violations of the phonotactic constraints of
a language, syntactic aloofness, and high expressivity, onomatopoeias
appear to be a universal phenomenon, displaying a high degree of
cross-linguistic phonetic similarity, whereas ideophones appear to be
rather an areal phenomenon.
The main findings are summarized in Chapter 9, conclusion (pp.
341–342), which is followed by the two appendices comprising the
questionnaires used to collect the data (pp. 343–351) and a rich list
of references (pp. 352–381). The volume also includes author, language
and subject indexes (pp. 382–398) to facilitate information retrieval.
EVALUATION
Lívia Körtvélyessy’s book Onomatopoeia: The Colorful World of Sounds
is a reference point in the study of onomatopoeia, due to the richness
and variety of the empirical evidence, and to the unitary, yet
multilayered analysis. Data were collected carefully to ensure the
comparability of the datasets. The two questionnaires appended to the
book required documented answers from the participants and a fine
balance between informativeness and concision.
The first notable strength of the book is the large number and
diversity of the surveyed languages. The author collected data from
124 languages for the first data sheet, regarding the status of
onomatopoeia in each language, and 103 language experts also answered
the second questionnaire, providing examples of onomatopoeias for the
indicated sound types. This is, to our knowledge, the largest dataset
available in a single work on onomatopoeia. Moreover, the selection of
languages was balanced with respect to macro-areas, language families,
and language status, taking WALS as a reference point. This prevents
perpetuation of the Indo-European bias in language studies, and lays
the grounds for more solid generalizations.
The second strength lies in the uniform analysis. While previous
typological works (e.g. Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001; Akita & Pardeshi
2019, dedicated to the larger class of ideophones) represent
collective volumes, in which each chapter either focuses on one
language or analyzes only certain aspects in several languages, this
monograph offers a multilevel analysis employing the same criteria for
all the languages. Chapter 4 is particularly noteworthy, as it
illustrates each of the prototypical characteristics of onomatopoeia
with tables comprising multiple examples (e.g., Table 4.5,
Extrasystemic sounds used in onomatopoeia), in an economic
reader-friendly format.
The volume also touches on theoretical aspects such as the
iconic-indexical-symbolic nature of onomatopoeias. The
cross-linguistic consistency of onomatopoeia patterns observed in
Chapter 6 brings evidence in support of sound symbolism, operating
with phonestemes as building blocks. The phonestemes previously
described in the literature are identified in onset, nucleus and coda
position, and their general meanings also appear from contrasts, e.g.
voiceless plosives in onset positions appear in lower intensity sounds
than the ones represented by voiced plosives. As noted by Kwon & Round
(2015), phonestemes are organized in paradigms, allowing for
morphological interpretation. The onomatopoeic data supports a larger
avenue of research regarding the role of phonestemes in
word-formation.
The volume, although dense, reads smoothly due to the many recap
paragraphs inserted at the end of big sections and even as
intermediate wrap-ups within the longer chapters. As mentioned, the
book is based on a large collection of onomatopoeia from 103 languages
(second questionnaire). Though rich in examples, the chapters
naturally include only a selection, and part of the dataset remains
inaccessible to the reader. The publication of the entire dataset in
one of the open science platforms, in line with the FAIR principles,
would highly benefit the scholarly community, allowing for alternative
methodologies to be applied to this valuable data. The aim of the
volume, namely, to offer “a cross-linguistic multilevel coverage of
onomatopoeias” (p. 9), is fulfilled through rich documentation and
in-depth analysis.
REFERENCES
Akita, Kimi & Prashant Pardeshi (eds.). 2019. Ideophones, mimetics and
expressives (Iconicity in Language and Literature 16).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. Edited by
Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Translated by Wade Baskin. New
York: Philosophical Library.
Körtvélyessy, Lívia & Štekauer (eds.) 2024. Onomatopoeia in the
world’s languages: A comparative handbook. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Körtvélyessy, Lívia. 2020. Onomatopoeia–A unique species?. Studia
Linguistica 74 (2), 506-551.
Körtvélyessy, Lívia. 2024. In search of a semiotic model for
onomatopoeia. Folia linguistica, 58(3), 783-809.
Kwon, Nahyun & Erich Round. 2015. Phonaestemes in morphological
theory. Morphology 25(1), 1-27.
Peirce, Charles. 1994. Collected Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Voeltz, FK Erhard & Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.). 2001. Ideophones
(Typological Studies in Language 44). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Dryer, Matthew S. & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). 2013. WALS Online.
Version 2020.4. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13950591
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Monica Vasileanu is a researcher at the ‘Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru
Rosetti’ Institute of Linguistics and a lecturer in Linguistics at the
University of Bucharest. She is an editor of The Etymological
Dictionary of Romanian. Her research interest is word-formation, and
her latest publications focus on Romanian lexical blending.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2544
----------------------------------------------------------