Т.О. Козубняк м. Хмельницький (Германістика)

THE USAGE OF ONOMATOPOEIC WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The greatest and most precious treasure of every nation is its language. This is a vital tool for communication. It is not only a means of communicating thoughts and ideas, but it builds friendship, economic relationships and cultural ties.

The language consists of words. The word is a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit of a language. As in any other language, new words constantly arise in English. They are formed in different ways. Onomatopoeia is one of the waysof word-formation in modern English, when a word is formed by imitating different sounds. Most often onomatopoeias aim at imitating sounds produced by people, animals, nature, machines and tools.

Sound imitation words are frequently used in speech. Virtually every human faculty engage with imitation. A sound theory underlies that we read not only with our eyes but also with our ears. The smallest child, learning to read by reading about bees, needs no translation for buzz. Subconsciously we hear the words on a printed page [4]. Due to onomatopoeia the language becomes more emotional, vivid and meaningful. And, as it is noted by R.S. Ginsburg, these words provide a special stylistic colouring to the context [3, 32].

Onomatopoeic words are the first in children speech. It happens because of the fact that there is a connection between form and content among echoisms, so they can be easily memorized by children. There is a lot of poetry, made for children, where animal sounds are used:

Bow-wow, says the dog,

Mew, mew says the cat,

Grunt, grunt, goes the hog,

And squeak goes the rat.

Tu, whu, says the owl,

Quack, quack, says the duck,

And what the cuckoo says you know.

Echoisms help children to remember names of the animals and birds not because of their specific meaning, but because of the sounds that they believe are associated with unknown objects. So, we can say that children are the main creators of onomatopoeic words.

Sounds produced by animals, nature, machines and tools are particularly challenging for imitation, as sounds are not produced by another vocal system and therefore imply strong imitative efforts, for example sounds that come from striking blows on doors and pressing light switches or computer mouse buttons, which are also readily associated with the English onomatopoeias knock and click [1].

Another challenging sphere is the description of the movement of trains, buses, trolleybuses. An attempt to reproduce these sounds can be found in by Paul Edmonds’s poem “Look out”:

Look out, look out, a motor is coming!

Look out, look out, a motor is coming!

Here it comes splashing, and hooting and dashing.

Look out, look out, look out, look out!

Onomatopoeic words directly reflect the vivid picture of events. With the help of these sounds, pleasant and unpleasant action, fast  precise movements are transmitted. For example, Alfred Tennyson in the poem “Song of the Lotus-Easter”shows languid life of the lotus with the help of echoisms that are used to describe the location of the plant:

Here are cool mosses deep;

And through the moss the ivies creep,

And in the scream the long-leafed flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

Here the long sound [i:] reflects the inertness of the life, and short sounds, vice versa, reflect various fast movements, such as: flap, flip, flop.

Sound imitation can also be used as a stylistic device. M.I.Mostovyiy notes: “Combinability of words, that sound alike produces an additional noise effect, reflecting features, which accompany an action or a movement” [5, 32]. For example, W. Shakespeare in “The Witches’ Spell” with the help of words double, trouble, bubble intensifies the effect of gurgling:

Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Nowadays, sound imitation is also used in modern computer games. For example, in the game “Mario” we can find different onomatopoeic words, such as thwomp (the sound that is produced by the collision of different objects), youppi.

Onomatopoeia is also frequently usedin comic books and comic strips where space is limited and words must be used to their fullest effect to maximize their effectiveness in telling a story and conveying meaning and context to the reader. Popular culture historian Tim DeForest noted the impact of writer-artist Roy Crane, the creator of “Captain Easy” and “Buz Sawyer”:“It was Crane who pioneered the use of onomatopoeic sound effects in comics, adding bam, pow and wham to what had previously been an almost entirely visual vocabulary. Crane had fun with this, tossing in an occasional ker-splash or lickety-wop along with what would become the more standard effects. Words as well as images became vehicles for carrying along his increasingly fast-paced storylines [2, 38].”

Furthermore, in 2002, DC Comics introduced a villain named Onomatopoeia, an athlete, martial artist and weapons expert who often speaks sounds.

So, onomatopoeia is a powerful device that authors can use to create a more immersive atmosphere by engaging the sense of sound, a concept that is often difficult to convey with words. Like all figures of speech, its use can help to better explain events, give a more vivid description of people, places, and ideas, and provide the reader with a better understanding of the writer’s intent and meaning.

Literature

1.  Assaneo M. F. The anatomy of onomatopoeia [Electronic resource] / MaríaFlorenciaAssaneo, Juan Ignacio Nichols and Marcos Alberto Trevisan. – Access mode: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0028317.

2.  DeForest T. Storytelling in the pulps, comics, and radio: how technology changed popular fiction in America / Tim DeForest. –Jefferson :McFarland, 2004. – 228 p.

3.  Ginsburg R. S. A course in modern English lexicology / R. S. Ginsburg.–  M.: High School, 1979.  – 279р.

4.  Kilpatrick J. Listening to what we write [Electronic resource] / James Kilpatrick.  – Access mode : http://humanevents.com/2007/07/30/listening-to-what-we-write/.

5.  Мостовий М.І. Лексикологіяанглійськоїмови / М. І. Мостовий. – X. :Основа, 1993. – 256с.