Running Head: APLING484 Course Project

Grammar Project 1

Course Project

in APLNG484 Teaching Functional Grammar

Shiho Asato

The Pennsylvania State University Grammar Project 2

この間も、外国人留学生に「もじもじしないで聞きたいことがあったら、聞いてく

ださい」と言ったら、「もじもじってなんですか？」って聞き返されました。

(pp. 13-14, Yamaguchi, 2002)

Japanese has a rich store of ideophones. According to Inui (year), Japanese has 1200 entries of ideophones whereas English has 350 entories. In the recent publication, Ono

(2007) made a list of 4500 Japanese ideophones. Despite of this large scale of vocabulary, ideophones are still underresearched area in Japanese.

Definition of Ideophone

It is helpful to introduce the definition of ideophones before moving on to the main task. According to Doke (1935), ideophone is “a vivid representation of an idea in sound. A word, often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, colour, sound, smell, action, state or intensity.” (Doke, 1935 p.118) In other words, ideophones are sound-symbolic words which have a strong bond between phonological level and abstract semantic level. Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz (2001) claims that ideophones cannot be categorized into one syntactic feature, and they function in multiple ways within a grammar. The sound symbolism and the multi functions in grammar confuse learners of Grammar Project 3

Japanese. However, this rich store of word category cannot be avoided in the system of

Japanese. In this paper, taking a cross-linguistic perspective, I consider how Japanese ideophones are translated into English and analyze syntactic and semantic gaps between the two languages.

Categories of Ideophones in Japanese

According to Kakei & Tamori (1993), the ideophones in Japanese are classified into two main categories according to their semantic characteristics: phonomimes and phenomimes. Phonomimes are the words that mimic actual sounds and composed of two sub categories of giseigo and giongo that mimic human and animal sound respectively. On the other hand, Phenomimes represent non-auditory senses and consist of three sub categories: Gijogo, also known as psychomimes represents humans’ psychological state or body sensation, giyogo and gitaigo that describe living things’ and non-animate things’ manner of action or state respectively. Another unique characteristic of ideophones is their multiple functions in word classes even though they are most typically used as adverbs.

This discussion is taken up in the following chapters with references of the actual data. Grammar Project 4

Data Collection and Analysis

Data sources of this study are the chapters from one to three in the Japanese novel of

“Noruwei no mori” (Murakami, 1987) and its English translated volume of “Norwegian

Wood” (Rubin, 2000). First, all ideophones were extracted from the Japanese text, and their grammatical functions and semantic features were analyzed. Then, each item was compared with its English translation.

Findings

Four semantic categories of ideophones out of five were found from the Japanese text, and no Giseigo was found in the text. The table 1 below describes the descriptive statistics of the entire data. In this section, I discuss the findings with respect to the following four categories of ideophones.

Table 1

giongo gijogo gitaigo giyogo Total noun 2 0 0 0 2 verb 0 4 0 0 4 adj 0 0 3 0 3 adv 10 1 42 78 131 interjection 0 2 0 0 2 Grammar Project 5

12 7 45 78 142 The grammatical categories of Japanese ideophones are based on Iwasaki’s (2002) classification of word class. The table shows that adverbial usage holds the majority of the data. I discuss about this subject in the following section with actual data.

1. Giongo

In total, twelve words of giongo were found. As it can be seen in the Table 2, giongo is divided into two word classes; 10 words out of 12 (83%) of giongo are classified as adverbs and the remaining two words (17%) are classified as nouns. The Table 3 describes the comparison of giongo and their English translations.

Table 2

Word Class Giongo noun 2 16.7% verb 0 0.0% adjective 0 0.0% adverb 10 83.3% interjection 0 0.0% 12 100%

Table 3

English noun verb adverb n/a total Grammar Project 6

Japanese noun 2 0 0 0 2 adverb 1 4 1 4 10 total 3 4 1 4 12 The example sentence 1 is the sentence that contains all the two cases of noun-to- noun translation of giongo.

e.g.1)「どうしようもないでしょうね。ひゅうううう、ポン、それでおしまいだもの」

“The end. Aaaaaaaah, splat. Finished.”

This sentence is from a scene in which the narrator’s girlfriend Naoko is telling about a huge hole to the narrator. In the context, it reads that the subject of the sentence is human and the person is falling from the edge of the hole. Comparing the two sentences, “hyuuuu” in Japanese is a mimetic sound of a falling object while “aaaaaaaah” in English is a mimetic sound of a human’s yell. This semantic gap between two languages depicts a contrasting view towards human being in a process of falling down. While the Japanese writer conceptualizes the falling human being as a dead, the English writer conceptualizes the falling human being as a living thing. In the end, at the moment of hitting ground, both writers seem to conceptualize human as a dead body. This fact can be read from the usage of explosive sounds in both languages (“pon” and “splat”).

In contrast, the other type of word class, adverbial giongo is translated into various types of English word classes. All adverbial giongo are the combination of stem word

(giongo) and quotative particle “to”. The largest number of adverbial giongo (4 out of 10 in the Table 3) is translated into verbs which have mimetic connotation. The followings are the examples.

e.g.2) それが靴の下でぱりぱりという音を立てた。 Grammar Project 7

…, crunching beneath of our shoes.

e.g.3) 部屋に戻ってくるとパンパンと音を立ててタオルのしわをきちんとのばしてスチ

ームの上にかけて乾かし、

Bask in the room, he would snap the wrinkles out of his towel and lay it on the radiator to dry,

The giongo “paripari (toiu)” is classified as an attributive use of mimetic adverbs

(Hamano, 1998, p.15).

Another type of translation of adverbial giongo is translation into adjectives. The example is as follows:

e.g.4) 朝方ぱらぱらと降ったりやんだりしていた雨も昼前には完全にあがり、

The brief off-and-on showers of the morning

Some ideophones are polysemic, so one polysemic ideophone can be categorized into multiple categories. For example, “parapara” in the sentence 4 can also be categorized as giongo in light of its sound mimetic aspect whereas it can be categorized as gitaigo in light of its representation of manner of action.

Equal as the case of translation into verbs, four cases of the adverbial giongo are lost in translation. In these cases, the feelings of the sound of giongo were not expressed in

English text.

e.g.5) その振動でベッドがどすんどすんと上下したからだ。

He took his jumping seriously and made the bed bounce every time he hit the floor.

e.g.6) ゲエゲエ吐きたいのを死にものぐるいでおさえたよ、

I wanted to puke but I fought it. Grammar Project 8

2. Gijogo

Gijogo is a category of ideophones that represents humans’ psychological state or body sensation and it is also called also as psychomimes. In total, seven words of gijogo were found. As it is summarized in the Table 4, 4 words (57%) of gijogo are classified as adverbs, 2 words (28%) are classified as interjections, and one word (14%) is classified as an adverb. Because Gijogo represents humans’ psychological state or body sensation, its usage as an interjection is an idiosyncratic nature of this category.

Table 4

Word Class Gijogo Noun 0 0.0% Verb 4 57.1% adjective 0 0.0% Adverb 1 14.3% interjection 2 28.6% 7 100.0% The Table 5 describes the comparison of gijogo and their English translations.

Table 5

English Noun verb adjective verb + noun n/a total Japanese verb 1 1 1 1 0 4 interjection 0 0 0 0 2 2 adverb 0 0 0 0 1 1 total 1 1 1 1 3 7 Grammar Project 9

As the Table 5 and the example sentences 7 and 8 indicate, gijogo “yareyare” as interjections are not translated into English at all; though, the dash in the sentence 7 might account for the speaker’s disgusted feeling. In addition, neither does the same gijogo

“yaryare” as an adverb in the example sentence 9 disappear in the English translation, too.

These facts might be notable to examine further; however, in this short study with limited data, only a bare sketch can be given for these facts.

e.g.7) やれやれ、またドイツか、と僕は思った。

So—Germany again.

e.g.8) そして一人になってから、やれやれ俺はいったい何をやっているんだろうと思っ

てうんざりした。

What the hell I am doing? I started wondering as soon as I was alone and feeling disgusted with

myself.

e.g.9) やれやれと僕は思った。

[No equivalent sentence in the text.]

3. Gitaigo

Gitaigo is a category of ideophones that describes non-animate things’ manner of action or state. As the Table 6 summarizes, gitaigo in the text is made up of two word Grammar Project 10

classes; 42 words out of 45 words (93%) are classified as adverbs and the remaining three words (7%) are classified as adjectives.

Table 6

Gitaigo noun 0 0.0% verb 0 0.0% adjective 3 6.7% adverb 42 *93.3% interjection 0 0.0% 45 100.0% The fact that the adverbial usage commands an absolute majority of ideophones in

Japanese, as has been suggested in the previous section, is due to different classifications of word classes between two languages. Word class classification of ideophones is based on the criteria by Hamano (1998). Following Japanese system of word classification, a word can be classified when it is with a particle even though it semantically modifies a noun like adverbs in English. For one example, ideophones are mostly used as adverbs when a particle either “to” or “te” customarily associates with them for quotation. For another example, when a D-verb “shita” (Nagashima, 1976) associates with ideophones, the D-verb Grammar Project 11

functions to construct adjective like modifiers. Nevertheless, they are actually categorized as adverbs. I discuss about this issue by take the following sentences for examples.

e.g.10) 僕の中には何かぼんやりした空気のかたまりのようなものが残った。

But there remained inside me as a vague knot-of-air kind of thing.

e.g.11) そして時が経つにつれてそのかたまりははっきりとした単純なかたちをとりはじ

めた。

And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simple form.

e.g.12) のっぺりとした空港ビルの上に立った旗や

A flag atop a squat airport building

In the sentence 10, the gitaigo with a D-verb “bonyari-shita” semantically modifies the noun “katamari” (knot), and in the sentence 11, the gitaigo with a quotative particle and a D-verb also semantically modifies the noun “katachi” (form). Comparing the English sentences in above three example sentences, these mimetic adverbs are translated into adjectives. I look deeper into the sentence 12 that illustrates a semantic gap between two languages. The gitaigo “nopperi” means flat and loose surface whereas its English translation “squat” means short and thick in shape. Although both words have relatively negative connotation, “nopperi” only describes a surface feature of objects while “squat” only describes shapes of objects. Grammar Project 12

The Table 7 summarizes how different word classes of gitaigo are translated into

English. Eleven adverbial gitaigo out of 42 words are translated into verbs, which is the second largest number of cases. I discuss about this subject by looking at some examples in detail.

Table 7

English noun phrase verb adjective adverb n/a *other total Japanese adverb 1 11 15 5 8 2 42 adjective 1 0 2 0 0 0 3 total 2 11 17 5 8 2 45 In the sentence 13, the gitaigo with the quotative particle “chan-to” functions as an emphatic adverb of the verb “sonzaisiteiru” (exist), which means exactly. In its English translation, this semantic emphasis is displayed by the verb “continued.” By juxtaposing with the durative verb of exist in a to-infinitive form, the verb “continue” emphasizes the durative aspect of the word “exist”.

e.g.13) 夜のあいだだって国家はちゃんと存在しているし、

The nation continued to exist after dark,

The sentence 14 is another example of translation of adverbial gitaigo into a verb.

There is a semantic gap between two expressions. Generally, the English word of “splash” Grammar Project 13

generally associates with liquid. In contrast, gitaigo “kirakira” describes sparkling shining of lights and has no connotation of fluidity.

e.g.14) 鮮やかな緑色をした桜の葉が風に揺れ、太陽の光をきらきらと反射させていた。

The cherry trees’ brilliant green leaves stirred in the air and splashed sunlight in all directions.

I devote a little more space to discussing about a specific example of gitaigo— surusuru. Both the sentence 15 and 16 are example usages of gitaigo with the quotative particle “surusuru-to”. In both cases, the manner which is expressed as “surusuru” in

Japanese seems to be emphasized by the phrasal verbs (climb up and come down) and inverted form of the sentences. However, the smooth texture which is described by the feeling of the sound of the gitaigo is totally missing.

e.g.15) そして旗がするするとポールを上っていく。

And up the flag would climb.

e.g.16) 旗はするすると降り、桐の箱の中に収まる。

Down the banner would come and find its place in the box.

Another case of adverbial gitaito also refers to another specific type of gitaigo— dandan, which I categorized as the other in the Table 7. This adverbial gitaigois usually used to describe gradual process by taking a form of “dandan …(ni) naru/suru” (gradually Grammar Project 14

become to …). This gradual process is translated into a form of a change-of-state copula

“grow” and comparative adjective “longer,” which can be seen in the sentence 17.

e.g.17) そして年月がたつにつれてそれに要する時間はだんだん長くなってくる。

And as the years have passed, the time was grown longer,

It is interesting to note that nearly 20 per cent (8 words out of 42) of adverbial gitaigo is lost in translation. The followings are the examples. It is obvious that missed translations fail to depict subtle nuances of the original sentences.

e.g.17) 大地にぽっかりと開いた直径一メートルばかりの暗い穴を草が巧妙に覆い隠して

いる。

a dark opening in the earth a yard across, hidden by the meadow grass.

e.g.18) 彼の頭上にはそういう力が備わっていることを示すオーラが天使の輪のようにぽ

っかりと浮かんでいて、

Above his head hung on an aura that revealed his power like an angel’s halo,

e.g.19) 道の上には夏の終わりに死んだ蝉の死骸がからからに乾いてちらばっていて、

The deceased corpus of cicadas that had died at the end of the summer littered the surface of the

e.g.20) ハンドルをぐるぐる回して開け閉めする水門だ。

It had a handle you could turn to open and close the gate. Grammar Project 15

A polysemous feature of a gitaigo is manifest in the sentence 17 and the sentence 18.

In sentence 17, gitaigo with the quotative participle “pokkari-to” modifies the prenoun adjectival*1 “aita” (opening). On the other hand, the same adjectival mimetic word “pokkari- to” modifies the verb “ukandeiru” (hung on) in the sentence 18. In addition to the sentence

4, these findings in the sentence 17 and 18 are the additional support of polysemic feature of ideophones.

*1 Prenoun advectival (rentai shi) word which modifies taigen

The most distinctive aspect of ideophones in Japanese is that Japanese perceive silence as a sound. The sound of silence is represented by a gitaigo “shin” that can be seen in the following sentences.

e.g.21) 我々はひどくしんとした松林の中を歩いていた。

Now we were walking through the frightful silence of a pine wood.

e.g.22) ロビーはいつもより人も少くしんとしていた。

…, so the lobby was usually deserted.

e.g.23) 日が暮れると寮はしんとして、まるで廃墟みたいなかんじになった。

After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin.

Each gitaigo representing the state of silence is translated in different ways. For example, in the translation of sentence 21, the state of silence is explicitly described by a noun Grammar Project 16

“silence.” The other two sentences are the case of translation into verb; however, there are semantic gaps between the sentences in the original Japanese text and their translations. In the original text, gitaigo “shin” illustrate two aspects of a state: physical aspect (emptiness) and auditory aspect (silence). However, in the sentence 22, the verb “desert” has connotations of emptiness or barrenness, which fails to include the aspect of auditory sense.

Likewise, the verb “hush” in the sentence 23 represents only the auditory aspect of the silence. In addition, the verb “hush” describes not a complete silence but a whispered state of sound.

4. Giyogo

Giyogo is a category of ideophones that describe living things’ manner of action or state, and it consists of the largest number of words in the data. As it can be seen in the

Table 8, all giyogo are classified as adverbs. On the contrary to a uniformity of word class in Japanese, their translations have the widest range of variation among the four semantic categories of ideophones (Table 9). Grammar Project 17

Table 8

Phenomine (animate) noun 0 verb 0 adj 0 adv 78 interjection 0 Exclamation 0 78

Table 9

English verb adv adj n/a prep clause Q Wh- inver total Japanese adverb 32 7 8 25 2 1 1 1 1 77 Some giyogo appear several times in the text. The most frequent word (seven times) is “jitto” which basically associates with an action of looking something. The English translations are consistent with this semantic feature such as look at, look straight, look straight into, peer into, staring, look into, and look one’s eye on. Likewise, giyoigo

“nikoniko” is always translated into “smile,” and “kusukusu” is translated into “chuckle.” Grammar Project 18

In general, the adverb to verb translation seems to take place when a verb holds sound symbolic meaning. If it doesn’t, either adverb or prepositional phrase tries to supplement the original meaning. In the example sentences, he phrase of “barabara ni” is a combination of giyogo and a change of state particle “ni.”

e.g.24) もし私が今肩の力を抜いたら、私バラバラになっちゃうのよ。

If I relaxed my body now, I’d fall apart.

e.g.25) 私はバラバラになって―どこかに吹きとばされてしまうのよ。

I’d go to pieces, and the pieces would be flown away.

The usage of “sappari” is interesting to look at. One usage of this word is to emphasize the negation in conjunction with a perceptive verb and a negative expression. As you can see from the sentences below, although grammatical features are different, all sentences are negative sentences.

e.g.26) …と僕は言ったが、何を話したのか思い出そうとしてもさっぱり思い出せなかっ

た。

…I said, trying without success to recall what we had talked about.

e.g.27) いったい自分が今何をしているのか、これから何をしようとしているのか、さっ

ぱりわからなかった。

I had no idea what was doing or what I was going to do.

e.g.28) 僕はそういう彼の中の背反性を最初からはっきりと感じ取っていたし、他の人々

にどうしてそういう彼の面がみえないのかさっぱり理解できなかった。

…, I could never understand why they weren’t just obvious to everyone else. Grammar Project 19

e.g.29) 蛍はまるで息絶えてしまったみたいに、そのままぴくりとも動かなかった。

Neither I nor it made a move for a very long time.

The sentence 29 is another example of negative sentence, and subject verb inversion put an emphasis on its stative situation. However, when it comes to the same word in a positive sentence, the emphatic meaning is lost in translation as follows:

e.g.30) そんなものをみんなきれいさっぱり忘れてしまうことにした。

Forget about…

The data shows that giyogo which have a phonetic pattern of /CVQCVCV/ such as

“shikkari,” “assari,” “hakkiri,” “kippari” are never translated into English and loose its feeling of words of exactness is not represented in English sentences at all. In this short study with a small amount of data, this subject can be mentioned only summarily.

The last example is a case whish has a semantic gap between the languages. In the sentence 31, the agent of the action in the Japanese sentence is the narrator (human being) while the agent in the English sentence is the text or lines. The giyogo “surasura” is used to describe the manner of something running like fluid. Therefore, the English translation

“pour” well represents the state that the words coming out of the writer’s head like a stream of water. Grammar Project 20

Conclusion

In this study, I discussed variety of ideophones in Japanese and their translation into another language. Usage-based analysis provides a support for the importance of the study of ideophones. This idiosyncratic word category has room to have further research. Grammar Project 21

Reference

Doke, C. M. (1935). Bantu linguistic terminology. London: Longmans.

Hamano, S. (1998). The sound symbolic system of Japanese. Stanford, CA: CSLI

Publications.

Iwasaki, S. (2002). Japanese. Phiradelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kakehi, H., Tamori, I., & Schourup, L. (1996). (Eds.) Sound Symbolism.

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Murakami, H. (1987). Noruwei no mori. Tokyo: Kodansha.

Nagashima, Y. (1976). Fukugo-do-dhi-no kozo (The structure of compound verbs). In T.

Suzuki (Ed.), Nihongo_Koza 4: Nihongo-no goi-to hyogen (Studies of the Japanese

language 4: Japanese vocabulary and idioms). Tokyo: Taishukan.

Ono, M. (2007). Giongo gitaigo 4500 nihongo onomatope jiten, Tokyo: Shogakukan.

Rubin, J. (2000). Norwegian wood. NY: Vintage Books.

Voeltz, E. F. K., & Kilian-Hatz, C. (2001). Ideophones. PA: John Benjamins Publishing

Company.

Yamaguchi, N. (2002). Inuha biyo to naite ita. Tokyo: Kobunsha. Grammar Project 22