40 лет Санкт-Петербургской типологической школе
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All this brings us to the conclusion: Germanic iterative RL-for-matives are iconic in origin, and their nature is iconic.
Surprisingly enough, this conclusion, so evident for the unbiased — and objectively the only one feasible — had not been formulated earlier, clearly and unambiguously.
Our conclusion re the Germanic RL-formatives is corroborated by «external» data from various other languages.
The cross-linguistic geography of RL-formatives is indeed impressive, all of them honouring one and the same macropattem.
Ramstedt [1952] stresses the fact that «Word formation in Altaic languages evinces a strong preference for onomatopoeic renderings». Ramstedt cites i. a. verbs in — ra, — la, — kira : Turkic jiltire «to glimmer, flicker», b"urk"a «to bum», titire «to tremble»; Mongolian burla «grumble»; sis-kire «to whistle» [ibid.].
For Turkish, Dmitriev [1962: 64f] discussed ut/"ul/~ "it//il, ur//"ur ~"ir//ir (e. g. in z"ir"il «the purling or murmur of water» and cigir «the crunching of snow») as — again: nota bene —
In general, it seems that Turkic tradition tends to regard verbs ending in r, / as disyllabic, and essentially underived (see e. g. [Xaritonov 1954: 167; Scerbak 1987:129]).
For Buryat, Tsydendambayev [1958: 143] stresses that «in onomatopoeic words all endings… act as word-formation suffixes». For Nanaian, Kile [1973: 43] points out: «The interesting feature about the final endings of simple-stem iconic words is that they are as it were prototypes of word-formational suffixes. <…> In the word-formational suffixes — r-r, — ria-a, — riok and — riu-u we see the common element r, spawning all these variants».
In extensive RL adventures across world languages I came across a striking case of the R-formative in Karanga (Shona, a Bantu language). Its continuative verb forms take the suffix — ra/-ira/-era , reduplicated — rara/-irira/-erera: pota «go (in a curve)» — potera «go round» — poter-era «go round and round». The Karanga verb also has a «destructive», or «undoing» form in — ura, — urura : futa «swell» — futura «stretch out», pfura «knock, kick» — pfururura «knock out, scatter». V. Mathesius [1931: 427,432] was of the opinion that intensity may be expressed not only in the force of the action within a given period but also in the duration of the action, whether interrupted or uninterrupted. I would add here this snippet from Marconnes, with his telling examples: «Like the Destructive… the Projective (i. e. Continuative. — S. V.) — aira is intensive, and denotes a very long duration…» (Cf .)pfunda «make a knot» — pfundaira «knit one's brow, frown» — pfundarara «puff out one's cheeks» [Marconn`es 1931:198]. The Karanga R-formative — not just the root — thus adopts various guises to suit iconic variation.
Jespersen [1928: 28] paid attention to the extremely important nature of the difference between monosyllabic iconic words, which express single sounds and movements, and disyllabic iconic words, denoting continuous sounds and movements; the latter are very often formed with suffixes — er and — le, employed thus in a multitude of languages, even outside the Aryan world. A similar observation was made, for Yakut, by Xaritonov [1954: 167]: «… in monosyllabic onomatopoeic roots, their very monosyllabism is a form of expression for momentary sounds. <…> Quantative complexity of sound, as well as its arrangement on the time scale, is rendered by augmenting the root». Cf. [Gazov-Ginzberg 1965:159].
Gonda [1940: 20If], in analyzing Malay/Indonesian onomatopoeic and sound-symbolic words with the iterative infixes — er- and — el-, proposes comparison of the latter with English and Dutch formations in, respectively, — er, — le and — eren, — elen.
Ever cautious with regard to the idea of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism, Gonda nevertheless arrives at the conclusion that the Malay/Indonesian — er-, -el- infixes are not grammatical morphemes — they are concomitant to imitating sound or movement, and their source (or at least one of their sources) may be a significant number of iconic words [ibid.].
In Sundanese, RL-formatives are an expression of the category of plurality — for verbs, adjectives, and sometimes nouns: dink «to sit (sg.)» — dariuk «to sit (pi.)», bodo «foolish (sg.)» — barodo «foolish (pi.)», budak «child» — barudak «children».
As I showed earlier, mostly for English, r in the onomotapoeic root is always (no exceptions) iconic, fulfilling onomatopoeic function of rendering
In a great number of cases we have the infixal r fulfilling the sound-symbolic function of simple repetition:
Broadening the perspective, it was expedient to gauge the RL situation in some language typologically different from English and Indonesian. Closely linked to a series of typological studies (e. g. [Voronin, Lapkina 1977; Lapkina, Voronin 1979; cf. Voronin, Lapkina 1989]), was the CandPhil by Lapkina [1979], a postgraduate of mine, discussing onomatopoes in Bashkir (as compared to English). As in other Turkic languages, R-formations are a significant part of Bashkir onomatopoeic vocabulary. Usually the R-formative is seen in Turkology as conveying plurality, iteration, intensity (e. g. [Asmarin 1928; Xaritonov 1954; Sevortian 1962; Xudajkuliev 1962; Ismuxametov 1970; Serebrennikov 1977]), thus imparting to the onomatope only a subsidiary, quantitative characteristic (not unlike the formative in English). Phonosemantic analysis, however, shows that, at least for Bashkir, this sound-symbolic function of r in the formative largely makes way for the qualitative onomatopoeic function of rendering pure dissonance. Consider thus supyr «(dial.) to bubble» denoting essentially an iteration of the instant sound of a stone going plop into the water, the latter rendered by the onomatope sup: the r's function is sound-symbolic; as opposed to this consider typyr in the sense «the rattling sound of machine-gun fire»: the r's function is onomatopoeic (like in tur «vibrant sound», with r part of the root).
Studies in a number of Germanic (English, German, Dutch), Turkic (Bashkir, Kirghiz, Chuvash) languages, as well as Malay/Indonesian, and Samoyed (Selkup) languages demonstrate that these formatives comprise a phonosemantically valid part of iconic word.
The evolution of RL is related to the process of denaturalization (the erosion of iconisity) in RL-formatives. This is best seen in r (the phonosemantically more powerful of the two sonants), discussed in the present paper. In root onomatopoeia, r is an important qualitative feature of the referent; it comes forth as the constituting element of an entire class of onomatopes («frequentatives»), first elicited in Voronin [1969]. It is the qualitative idiosyncrasy/exclusiveness of r that encompasses the very possibility of its development towards an element of nothing more than a quantitative characteristic of the referent: «dissonance, vibration, roughness, staccato nature, intermittence' — „iteration, plurality, prolongation, intensity“. And this possibility is widely used by the most diverse languages. The quantitativeness of the iterative R-affix germinates from the qualitativeness of the r-element in the phonetic structure of the onomatopoeic root word. What happens is the transformation of r from concrete qualitative characteristic of the referent, its „downgrading“ to an abstract quantitative characteristic (a de-qualification of r» s semantics, together with its quantification).