Japanese ideophones : towards a systematic phono-semantic description

Ideophones are not unique to Japanese, nor typologically uncommon, but, since largely absent from Europe-centered languages, they pose a number of questions to linguists traditionally not accustomed to (or simply oblivious of) them. The paper briefly outlines the definition and characteristics of ideophones in Japanese, including their internal typology and difference from onomatopoeia. However more important point to be made was whether this group of words can be described in terms of correlation between their phonological structure and meaning. Some regularities seem to exist, and attempts to outline these regularities have been made. This, in turn, brings up the age-old discussion of arbitrariness of language signs.