Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology ()
Rah-rah! Investigating the variation in phonosemantic motivation in a set of iconic nouns expressing the concept . A diachronic semantic approach
Abstract
This paper aims to describe and compare phonosemantic motivation in the English lexicon within a group of nouns expressing enthusiasm. From an emergent cognitive usage-based perspective (Bybee [2013], Traugott [2014] and Schmid [2020]), the lexicon is motivated by multiple motivational ties that are both syntagmatic and paradigmatic (see Booij & Audring [2018]), building a network of interconnected expressions of varying degrees of morphosyntactic complexity in the lexicon. The resulting structure is part of the larger constructicon of a language (Hoffmann [2017]), constantly evolving under the pressures of usage and changing networks of motivational ties. The phonological aspect of lexical items is an essential component in the makeup and the storage of words (Bybee [2013]). Diachronic lexical iconicity studies such as Flaksman [2017], [2020] suggest there is an iconic treadmill in place leading to loss of iconicity associated with regular sound change and semantic change. In order to test the iconicity within a set of words expressing enthusiasm this study carries out a lexicographic analysis followed by a diachronic corpus study of sixteen phonologically motivated expressions using the COHA and the OEC. Our study will focus on a dataset of nouns with iconic roots expressing , including rah-rah, gung-ho, zhuzh and pizzazz. The lexicographic analysis using the OED determines dates of emergence, etymological origins and semantic development of the expressions (also see Smith [2020]), and the COHA and the OEC corpora provide a distributional semantic analysis of the target words (Hilpert & Perek [2017]). The results show that there is some shared semantic space (i.e. similar collocational behaviour) amongst expressive nouns denoting , but frequencies and productivities vary. In addition, these nouns have strong diastratic (colloquial, slang) and diatopic properties (American English). This study illustrates that iconicity is tied to the global issue of competition and regulation within the lexicogrammatical continuum – the balance between innovation, creativity and expressivity on the one hand, and economy, stability and convention on the other hand (Goldberg [2019]).
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