Some of the Minor Types of Modern Word-Building. Sound-Imitation Onomatopoeia1)

(21) Onomatopoeia [onemaete'pie]. This type of word-formation is now also called echoism (the term was introduced by O. Jespersen).

= imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects.

(22) Different languages – different sound groups:

English dogs bark (cf. the R. лаять) or howl (cf. the R. выть).

English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo (cf. the R. ку-ка-ре-ку).

English ducks quack (cf. R. крякать)

English frogs croak (cf. R. квакать).

Exception: English cats mew or miaow (meow) (= Russian).

English cows moo (= Russian)

but also low.

(23) Some names of animals, insects and birds:

crow, cuckoo, humming-bird, whip-poor-will, cricket.

(24) The Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co.,

Pittsburg, Pa.

Gentlemen:

Why is it that your switch engine has to ding and fizz and spit and pant and grate and grind and puff and bump and chug and hoot and toot and whistle and wheeze and howl and clang and growl and thump and clash and boom and jolt and screech and snarl and snort and slam and throb and soar and rattle and hiss and yell and smoke and shriek all night long when I come home from a hard day at the boiler works and have to keep the dog quiet and the baby quiet so my wife can squawk at me for snoring in my sleep?

Yours

(From Language and Humour by G. G. Pocheptsov.)

(25) a hypothesis - imitation of not only acoustic phenomena, but also certain unacoustic features, qualities of inanimate objects, actions and processes or that the meaning of the word can be regarded as the immediate relation of the sound group to the object.

e.g. fluffy (young chicken) ← softness and the downy quality of its plumage or its fur in the sound;

to glance, to glide, to slide, to slip convey by their sound the nature of the smooth, easy movement over a slippery surface;

shimmer, glimmer, glitter reproduce the wavering, tremulous nature of the faint light;

to rush, to dash, to flash reflect the brevity, swiftness and energetic nature of their corresponding actions;

thrill conveys the tremulous, tingling sensation it expresses.

However, this theory has not yet been properly developed.

Reduplication

(26) = doubling a stem:

1) without phonetic changes (bye-bye, coll. = good-bye)

2) with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant (ping-pong, chit-chat) = gradational reduplication.

(27) most words → informal groups: colloquialisms and slang:

walkie-talkie ("a portable radio");

riff-raff ("the worthless or disreputable element of society"; "the dregs of society");

chi-chi (sl. for chic as in a chi-chi girl);

In a modern novel an angry father accuses his teenager son of doing nothing but dilly-dallying all over the town.

(dilly-dallying — wasting time, doing nothing, loitering)

Another example:

Lady Bracknell. I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.

(shilly-shallying — irresolution, indecision)

(From The Importance of Being Earnest by O. Wilde)