This chapter examines the extent of similarities between onomatopoeias representing identical or similar sound events. Since onomatopoeias are causally determined iconic images and indexes, one might expect a high degree of cross-linguistic similarity. As Akita and Imai (2022: 29) note in their model of an iconicity ring, onomatopoeias as instances of primary iconicity are characterized by early acquisition and, importantly, universality. Another factor that should contribute to the cross-linguistic similarity of onomatopoeic words is the phenomenon of sound symbolism, in particular, the existence of universal phonesthemes. Nevertheless, Chapter 6 identifies a range of factors affecting the level of cross-linguistic similarity, including psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, language-inherent factors as well as those related to the imitated sound event. This chapter identifies onomatopoeic patterns for eighteen sound events based on the sample data. The criteria include the number and the structure of the syllables, the type of the onset, nucleus, and coda, presence/absence of iconic reduplication, and vowel/consonant lengthening. An analysis of these patterns makes it possible to draw typological generalizations.

The idea of sound symbolism as “an inmost, natural similarity association between sound and meaning” (Jakobson and Waugh 2002: 182) in onomatopoeia and, more broadly, in ideophones has a long tradition. This chapter maps different views of the role of sound symbolism in onomatopoeia and provides an overview of phonesthemes as manifested in onomatopoeias in the examined sample of the world’s languages. The objective is (i) to identify cross-linguistic similarities in the use of phonesthemes to arrive at a universally system applicable to onomatopoeia and (ii) to identify language-specific phonesthemes. Based on these findings, the classical onomasiological model of word-formation is modified to show the actual role of phonesthemes in onomatopoeia-formation. The results contribute to the discussion on the significance and extent of sound symbolism in onomatopoeia.

This chapter introduces the field and the scope of research and the fundamental terminology. The basic objective of this monograph is primary onomatopoeia defined as imagic icons of the signified objects; prototypically, they are underived and uninflected monemes. The Introduction maps the state of the art in onomatopoeia research, mainly based on a questionnaire-based survey among language experts covering 124 languages of the world. It accounts for the method of language sampling. Since data collection can be significantly affected by the status of the sample languages, this section also provides their classification according to the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. This chapter also provides an overview of resources available for research in this field with a focus on the availability of dictionaries and corpora that identify the class of onomatopoeia. Significant attention is given to the categorization of sounds, an aspect often overlooked in onomatopoeia studies. This categorization is crucial for mapping the sound sources and sound events that onomatopoeias represent across the sampled languages.

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the occurrence of onomatopoeias in the sample languages with the aim of answering the question of the extent to which selected sound types are represented by onomatopoeias in the world’s languages. The point of departure is the categorization of sounds presented in the Introduction, which distinguishes sixteen sound types. First, the situation in macro-areas is mapped. Then, the data are analyzed by individual sound types and sound sources. Furthermore, the chapter seeks an answer to the question if there is a correlation between a language’s status on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale and the identified richness in onomatopoeia.

Chapter 6 is underpinned by the relevance-theoretic model of human cognition and ostensive–inferential communication. It reverses the directionality of the interdisciplinary relation by making suggestions that yield constructive backward effects on the relevance theoretic account. I start by focusing on literature and art as a relevance-yielding phenomenon and ask what makes the creation and reception of literature and art worth the selective attention of human cognition. Artistic thought states/processes, like artworks and literary texts, are worthy of attention at various time scales (momentary, developmental, evolutionary) in a way that cannot be dully captured by a purely cognitive account. So far, relevance theory has concentrated on cognitive types of effects and cognitive types of relevance. Reinterpreting neuroscientific findings of the last twenty-five years, I provide tentative evidence of possible perceptual and sensorimotor types of embodied effects and types of relevance (I call them perceptual effects and perceptual relevance) that also account for selectivity of attention and extend the existing cognitive relevance-theoretic machinery. I also briefly argue in favour of a relevance-based model of human selective directedness that would account for effects and relevance across the systems that compose what I call the composite human organism (cognitive, perceptual/sensorimotor and affective system).

The introduction outlines the main issues to be discussed in following chapters and underlines the paradigm-changing implications of the book for current attempts to bring literary/ art studies closer to empirical and cognitive domains such as linguistics and the cognitive sciences. It presents the book as a concrete example of two-way interdisciplinarity and methodological merger between literary and art-theoretical discourse on the one hand and naturalised scientific enquiry on the other. Finally, it identifies those aspects of the Chomskian and relevance theory programmes that make them crucial intellectual precursors to the present book.

Chapter 5 builds on the cognitivist account of literature and art introduced in Chapter 4 to provide a fresh approach to some persistent questions in literary theory, literary linguistics and the philosophy of art. It eliminates a number of long-standing taxonomic confusions and sheds light on enduring puzzles such as the problem of ‘indiscernible objects’: what is it that distinguishes a stretch of ordinary discourse and the same stretch of discourse when quoted verbatim in a poetry book as ‘found text’; mere urinals and Duchamp’s Fountain; a genuine artwork and a perceptually indiscernible perfect forgery? Are the moai, the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia, artworks? And if a ready-made artwork is accidentally broken, can it just be replaced by another token of the same type, or is the ‘original’ artwork inadvertently lost? The discussion opens entirely new ways of thinking that might help to escape centuries of dead-ends and circularities, while at the same time giving rise to new types of interdisciplinary programmes on the interface of literary and art studies, linguistics and the cognitive sciences.