Livia Kortvelyessy

• University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik

This paper presents an experiment with onomatopoeia formation. Fifty-one Slovak participants were asked to imitate ten sound events of various frequencies by writing down onomatopoeic words using the letters of the Slovak alphabet. The purpose of the experiment was to examine the role of image iconicity in producing new onomatopoeias. Image iconici...

In recent years, numerous publications on onomatopoeia have discussed this class of words either separately or as a part of a broader class of ideophones. Those focused on onomatopoeia usually provide a language-specific description primarily based on phonological, morphological and/or syntactic characteristics. Semiotically oriented papers general...

This article presents research into derivational properties of onomatopoeias in English and in Slovak. Onomatopoeias are defined narrowly in our approach, being restricted to the direct imitation of sounds of extra-linguistic reality. Our sample of 40 onomatopoeic words consists of two sound types: the sounds of animals and the sounds resulting fro...

As word formation can be conceptualized as an act of creativity with considerable space for differences among speakers, we present pilot research aimed at the examination of the role of Big-Five personality domains in the formation of new complex words. The sample consisted of 197 participants who underwent a word formation test and a personality a...

There are many ways in which we, as speakers, are creative in how we form and interpret new words. Working across the interfaces of psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, this book presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, showing how we manipulate the range of linguistic tools at our disposal to create an infinit...

Since the objective of our research is to examine the influence of the creative potential of language speakers on their creative performance in the formation and interpretation of new/potential complex words, there are several fundamental methodological principles that have to be taken into consideration. First of all is the method of measuring the...

This chapter analyzes the research data at several levels: (i) word-formation creativity and word-interpretation creativity; (ii) two age-based groups of respondents; (iii) separate evaluations with regard to the individual creativity indicators and subscores in order to find out whether they boost creativity and, if so, which of them does so; this...

There are many ways in which we, as speakers, are creative in how we form and interpret new words. Working across the interfaces of psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, this book presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, showing how we manipulate the range of linguistic tools at our disposal to create an infinit...

This chapter presents the fundamental theoretical principles underlying our research. It starts with the theoretical foundations of examining word-formation creativity, in particular, the system of onomasiological types, and the conception of the competition between two contradictory tendencies that can be identified (not only) in the field of word...

The main focus of this chapter is to evaluate the relevance of the hypotheses specified at the end of Chapter 4. The results indicate that the influence of individual indicators/subscores on creative performance cannot be determined as a single general conclusion because it varies in relation to the opposition between and/or the role of (i) differe...

Our research pursues an answer to the question of the influence of the general creative potential upon the creative performance in coining and interpreting new complex words. This chapter presents fundamental views, theories, and principles of the concept of creativity and because creative potential has been studied and evaluated by various psychol...

This book presents interdisciplinary research that lies on the crossroads of (a) psychology, specifically, its concept of the creative potential represented by six creativity scores, viz. Originality, Fluency, Flexibility, Elaboration, Creative Strengths and Composite Score, and the concept of creative performance; (b) linguistics, specifically, wo...

This article presents the results of a large-scale interdisciplinary project aimed at a corroboration of the role of creativity in the way university undergraduates (N = 309) coin new complex words. Specifically, the tendency towards economy of expression, preferred by a speaker, and the tendency towards semantic transparency, preferred by a listen...

The paper is aimed at the evaluation of whether, and if, to what degree, the psychological factor of creativity affects the interpretation of complex words. The research covered 324 students (17–18 years old) who attended (at the time of the experiment) various secondary schools in Košice, Slovakia. For the sake of evaluation, the respondents were...

Onomatopoeia has not been paid much attention in theoretical linguistics, which may be related to its iconic‐symbolic nature. Moreover, the concept of onomatopoeia and its classification seem to vary in different linguistic traditions. Therefore, a new theoretical conception of onomatopoeia is proposed that makes it possible to examine onomatopoeia...

The main goal of the paper is to analyze and evaluate the nature and the role of word-formation systems in a sample of 73 European languages. The basis for the comparison is 100 word-formation features representing 12 word-formation processes. The data is used to examine (a) the structural richness of word-formation systems at the level of individu...

The paper discusses the widely accepted assumption concerning the postulated universal ordering of derivational and inflectional affixes, first proposed by Greenberg as Universal #28. Various theoretical and empirical predictions underlying this assumption are briefly outlined. A sample of 73 European languages and a sample of 58 'world' languages...

Cross-linguistic research in the field of word-formation (WF) is more or less an untilled area. The main goal of this paper is to compare WF systems in Slavic languages, to analyse and evaluate their nature by comparing WF processes and types in Slavic languages as a whole as well as in individual languages of the Slavic genus. The basis for the co...

With examples drawn from over 200 world languages, this ground-breaking volume presents a state-of-the-art overview of evaluative morphology. Offering an innovative approach to major theoretical questions, the Edinburgh Handbook analyses the field from a cross-linguistic perspective, considering semantic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects, as w...

The paper discusses two significant tendencies in the formation of new complex words, the tendency towards semantic transparency and the tendency towards economy of expression. A new conception of the notion of semantic transparency is proposed within the framework of an onomasiological theory. It draws on the concept of the onomasiological type wh...

This volume offers a valuable overview of recent research into the semantic aspects of complex words through different theoretical frameworks. Contributions by experts in the field, both morphologists and psycholinguists, identify crucial areas of research, present alternative and complementary approaches to their examination from the current level...

This handbook is intended as a companion volume to the Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP, 2009), aiming to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. It examines theoretical and definitional matters, formal and semantic issues, interdisciplinary connections and detailed descriptions of derivational proc...

A pioneering book establishing the foundations for research into word-formation typology and tendencies. It fills a gap in cross-linguistic research by being the first systematic survey of the word-formation of the world's languages. Drawing on over 1500 examples from fifty-five languages, it provides a wider global representation than any other vo...

Phonetic iconicity in evaluative morphology is an integral part of sound symbolism in natural languages. Former research in this field has brought contradictory results. On the one hand, there is Universal #1926 (Plank and Filimonova’s Universals Archive, Konstanz) claiming universal marking of diminutives by front high vowels, and of augmentatives...

Universals Archive (Universal #1926) indicates a universal tendency for sound symbolism in reference to the expression of diminutives and augmentatives. The research (Štekauer et al. 2009) carried out on European languages has not proved the tendency at all. Therefore, our research was extended to cover three language families – Indo-European, Nige...

A simple googling of the expression phonetic iconicity gives more than 500,000 results. The number of results for sound symbolism is even higher – 5,240,000. Apparently, the idea that we know what is hidden behind the naming process is attractive and provoking at the same time. It results in numerous research studies with one basic aim – to prove t...