Kimi Akita

List of John Benjamins publications for which Kimi Akita plays a role.

Titles

Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives

Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi

[Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16] 2019. ix, 325 pp.
Subjects Phonology | Semantics | Theoretical linguistics

Iconicity: East meets West

Edited by Masako K. Hiraga, William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita

[Iconicity in Language and Literature, 14] 2015. x, 279 pp.
Subjects Phonology | Semiotics | Theoretical linguistics | Theoretical literature & literary studies

Articles

Over the past two decades, the casual register of Japanese has developed a new class of binomial adjectives, such as fuwa-toro ‘fluffy and creamy’ and gū-kawa ‘overwhelmingly cute’. These terms are particularly common in creative, nuanced descriptions of food, fashion, and personality. This… read more
Akita, Kimi and Mutsumi Imai 2022 The iconicity ring model for sound symbolismIconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems, Lenninger, Sara, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg and Elżbieta Tabakowska (eds.), pp. 27–46 | Chapter
The ‘iconicity ring model’ proposed in this chapter depicts a lexicon’s evolutionary path from genuine iconicity (termed ‘primary iconicity’) to arbitrariness to another type of iconicity (termed ‘emergent iconicity’) that emerges from linguistic systematicity. The model captures the… read more
Matsumoto, Yo, Kimi Akita, Anna Bordilovskaya, Kiyoko Eguchi, Hiroaki Koga, Miho Mano, Ikuko Matsuse, Takahiro Morita, Naonori Nagaya, Kiyoko Takahashi, Ryosuke Takahashi and Yuko Yoshinari 2022 Chapter 3. Linguistic representations of visual motion: A crosslinguistic experimental studyNeglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description: Deixis, asymmetries, constructions, Sarda, Laure and Benjamin Fagard (eds.), pp. 43–67 | Chapter
Linguistic expressions of visual motion (e.g., look into the building) in ten languages are compared, based on a crosslinguistic production experiment. We examine how linguistic representations of visual motion are typologically akin to those of self- and caused motion events. The results… read more
Ideophones and direct quotations are “depictive” signs, or vivid re-enactments of what they signify. Pursuing the typology of linguistic depiction, the current study proposes a three-way classification of depiction marking strategies: framing, foregrounding, and backgrounding. While well-known… read more
Akita, Kimi 2020 Modality-specificity of iconicity: The case of motion ideophones in JapaneseOperationalizing Iconicity, Perniss, Pamela, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 3–20 | Chapter
This study examines the semantic variety and specificity of Japanese ideophones for spatial motion events to illustrate the modality-specificity of iconicity. As verbal icons, motion ideophones tend to depict dynamic (e.g., auditory, spatio-temporal) aspects of motion events. Suprasegmental… read more
Akita, Kimi and Yo Matsumoto 2020 Chapter 5. A fine-grained analysis of manner salience: Experimental evidence from Japanese and EnglishBroader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions, Matsumoto, Yo and Kazuhiro Kawachi (eds.), pp. 143–180 | Chapter
This chapter delves into the typological discussion of “manner salience” (Slobin 2004, 2006) by means of a fine-grained examination of different kinds of manner expressions. Our two speech elicitation experiments revealed that English speakers are clearly more manner salient than Japanese in the… read more
Akita, Kimi 2019 Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of JapaneseIdeophones, Mimetics and Expressives, Akita, Kimi and Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), pp. 229–248 | Chapter
Mimetic/ideophonic utterances are often accompanied by expressive prosody and iconic gesture. This chapter reports the speaker’s facial expression and eye contact with the hearer as two more possible nonverbal correlates of mimetics on the basis of a multimodal corpus of Japanese interviews. It is… read more
Akita, Kimi and Prashant Pardeshi 2019 Introduction: Ideophones, mimetics, and expressives: Theoretical and typological perspectivesIdeophones, Mimetics and Expressives, Akita, Kimi and Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), pp. 1–10 | Chapter
Akita, Kimi 2017 Chapter 1. The typology of manner expressions: A preliminary lookMotion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide (ed.), pp. 39–60 | Chapter
The morphosyntax of manner expressions has attracted less attention than that of path expressions in the framing typology. Drawing primarily on experimental and quantitative data in Japanese and English, we propose and examine three parameters in the complex typology of manner expressions. It is… read more
This chapter examines the nature of linguistic expressions of Deixis, which is often coded somewhat differently from other components of Path. It is argued that deictic verbs like come are not merely spatial in meaning but also functional. Results of a video-based experiment in English, Japanese,… read more
Akita, Kimi 2015 Sound symbolismHandbook of Pragmatics: 2015 Installment, Östman, Jan-Ola and Jef Verschueren (eds.) | Article
Hiraga, Masako K., William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita 2015 Introduction: Ubiquity of Iconicity - East Meets WestIconicity: East meets West, Hiraga, Masako K., William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita (eds.), pp. 1–9 | Article
Usuki, Takeshi and Kimi Akita 2015 What’s in a mimetic? On the dynamicity of its iconic stemIconicity: East meets West, Hiraga, Masako K., William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita (eds.), pp. 109–123 | Article
This paper explores the fundamental semantic and syntactic properties of Japanese mimetic lexemes as iconic signs that depict various eventualities by means of linguistic sound. We argue how the two central features of mimetics – stem-based morphology and dynamicity – restrict their morphosyntactic… read more
Akita, Kimi 2013 The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlatesIconic Investigations, Elleström, Lars, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 331–350 | Article
This paper proposes an integrated account of the formal and functional non-uniformity exhibited by sound-symbolic words based on a hierarchy of lexical iconicity (i.e., iconicity of words). It is argued that the more iconic a vocalized sign is, the less strongly it is constrained by the linguistic… read more
Hasegawa, Yoko, Russell Lee-Goldman, Albert Kong and Kimi Akita 2013 FrameNet as a resource for paraphrase researchAdvances in Frame Semantics, Fried, Mirjam and Kiki Nikiforidou (eds.), pp. 109–132 | Article
Theoretically as well as empirically, paraphrase is a pivotal concept in many academic and nonacademic fields. And yet, its investigation has made very slow progress, due mainly to the lack of a framework that is versatile enough to deal with the nebulous nature of paraphrase in use. This paper… read more
Akita, Kimi 2011 Toward a phonosemantic definition of iconic wordsSemblance and Signification, Michelucci, Pascal, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg (eds.), pp. 1–18 | Article
Most studies have tried to define inherently iconic words (mimetics, ideophones) in terms of their formal features but phonosemantic peculiarity, assumed without empirical consideration, is not evidently distinct from regular sound symbolism. Two experiments were conducted to probe the… read more
Hasegawa, Yoko, Russell Lee-Goldman, Albert Kong and Kimi Akita 2011 FrameNet as a resource for paraphrase researchAdvances in Frame Semantics, pp. 104–127 | Article
Theoretically as well as empirically, paraphrase is a pivotal concept in many academic and nonacademic fields. And yet, its investigation has made very slow progress, due mainly to the lack of a framework that is versatile enough to deal with the nebulous nature of paraphrase in use. This paper… read more