Evaluating Onomatopoeia as a Linguistic Phenomenon in Albanian

Abstract

Onomatopoeia in Albanian has a great potential for the existence of the phonosthemes and sound symbolism. By adopting an explorative research design with the case-based approach to study onomatopoeia as a linguistic phenomenon in the Albanian language, a sample of 270 primary onomatopoeias was extracted primary and secondary sources. The primary sources included surveys and requests on social media and in conversations with respondents while the secondary sources comprised dictionaries and etymologies. The results of the study emerged out of consonant and vowel groups employed in onomatopoeia and compared with the regular word corpuses. Since onomatopoeia in Albanian is still productive in the field of word formation, it was evident that it might create the idea of the existence of the phonosthemes and sound symbolism. It was also revealed that it was not the case elsewhere, since some of the consonant groups employed within onomatopoeia were present in the regular word corpus of Albanian. The study implicates that consonant groups employed in onomatopoeic words appear within similar sounds of nature are often against the phonotactic rules of Albanian. The same is the case with the vowel groups, which in onomatopoeic words follow different rules than the vowel groups in the regular word stock of Albanian.