Korean Onomatopoeia

The Korean language has a very developed symbolic words system, amongwhich onomatopoetic words stand out. In this thesis, the characteristics ofonomatopoetic words are discussed in the ones of phonology-morphology, lexicalwords-senses and phrases-context.The Korean language's onomatopoetic words are really flexible rich invocabularies. According to the statistics number, 70 % of Korean are Chinese Korean.However, in onomatopoetic system without Chinese Korean, the pure fixed Koreanpronunciation maintains the perfect vowel system. To meet the demand of expression,onomatopoetic words have the changeable forms by the alternative of vowels andconsonants without changing the meaning, which is the crucial feature. As a result, thestudy about them can help further the understanding of Korean pronunciation systemand make onomatopoetic words widespread.All the former researches can not study onomatopoetic words wholly, but insome way, which all too often limit to the field of the hypogyny recognition or thecontrast of language sense caused by the alternative of vowels and consonants. In thisthesis, the basic laws are shown with the all-around analyses inphonology-morphology, lexical words-senses and phrases-context.The thesis is made up of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction part.The second chapter is the characteristics of onomatopoeic words inphonology-morphology; The third chapter is the characteristics of onomatopoeicwords in lexical words -sense. The fourth chapter is the characteristics ofphrase-context. For the convenience of discussion, 2219 onomatopoeic words arechosen from "The Comparison of Korean and Japanese Symbolic words" and thesample passages are from the present Korean language textbooks for the middleschools and primary schools. They are discussed with examples, theories, diagramsand statistics and so on. And the conclusions are as follows:1. According to phonology the syllables of onomatopoeic words are disyllable,quadrisyllable, trisyllable, hexasyllable, monosyllable, Pentasyllable. The researchshows disyllables are the dominant part in onomatopoeic words. Then according tothe allophones of head voices arrangement, explodents take up the biggest part,among which, the head phonemes of "t, t', t' " happen most frequently. While thespirants are the smallest parts followed by resonance words among which, "n, m" takeup the smallest part. The rate of vowels and consonants allophones of head voices is14:86. This rate is in accordance with the one of allophones of head voices in theKorean language. The obstacle phonemes occur by 94.3% in the consonantappearance, far higher than the one of resonance(56.48%). "g" is the main one in thefinal phonemes "g,η, l". Therefore, the Korean onomatopoeic words are made up ofthe pause and leap phonemes.(1) in morphology, onomatopoeic words have the forms of diversity, withreiteration form, prolonging form and shortening form. There is the catalogue aboutthem in the thesis. (2) In the inversion of part of speech, two forms are mainly discussed, that is,onomatopoeic words+noun suffixes; onomatopoeic words+substantive suffixes(verbs and adjtives).2. the Characteristic of vocabularies-sense it is about the characteristics ofphoneme symbolic sense and the phenomenon of morpheme overlap. According tothe research, onomatopoeic words mainly appear in the vocabularies formed by theintrinsic change of vowels and consonants in radical parts. Neither are onomatopoeicwords influenced by the vowel relative rule nor are the senses changed. These rulesare only the expressions of being bigger, thicker, more, stronger and heavier orsmaller, shorter, less, weaker and lighter of the same onomatopoeic word. And thesechanges only indicate the ones of sentimental sense and appraising significancerelatively without changing the radical sense.. Next, homophonic words andhomophonic moods with great proportion in onomatopoeic words indicate the sensesof being repeated, and continuous.3. Onomatopoeic phrases----They are discussed in three parts. First, it is about theunion of onomatopoeic words and verbs, adjectives, nouns and auxiliary words takingadvantage of the characteristics of context. Next, onomatopoeic words act as theadverb, the attribute, the predicate and the independent component in functions..Finally onomatopoeic words echo nouns and verbs closely. Some onomatopoeicwords are attached to nouns or verbs or the other way around. This article mainlydeals with the characteristics and rules of onomatopoeic words, hoping it cancontribute to the research of onomatopoeic words and imitative words.