ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a succinct overview of Japanese mimetics within the universal category of the ‘ideophone.’ The verbal use of a mimetic seems to be fairly straightforward; it is a structure of the mimetic immediately combined with a ‘light’ verb, typically suru, in which the mimetic provides the semantic content and the light verb supports the grammatical morphemes. In the context of Japanese, mimetics are typically assigned with respect to four categories: Adjective, Adverb, Noun, and Verb. The key semantic distinction seems to be whether the mimetic is used referentially or predicationally. The notion of an ‘adverbial’ use of a mimetic typically considers a bare form or a mimetic followed by the adverbial marker to; this is well documented, and the conditions on the appearance of to are being thoroughly investigated by several scholars. The mimetic will be a prenominal modifier in Japanese, used with some supporting morpheme, such as the copula.
