Ideophones as iconic mixed items

Abstract

Ideophones such as the German 'plitsch platsch' ‘splish splash’, 'holterdipolter' ‘helter-skelter’ and 'ratzfatz' ‘very quickly, fast’ have long been considered exceptions to the rule ofarbitrariness in natural language. However, they have been argued to be a near universal feature of language (cf. Diffloth (1972); Kilian-Hatz (1999)) and with the increased interest in the meaning contributions of iconic forms (cf. Ebert et al. (2020); Esipova (2019); Schlenker (2018b, a) among others), this article aims to contribute to the growing literature on iconicity and meaning by presenting an analysis of ideophones as “iconic mixed items”, combining both descriptive and depictive meaning, similar to the expressive mixed items discussed by McCready (2010); Gutzmann (2011).