SHORT REPORT Onomatopoeias: a new perspective around space, image schemas and phoneme clusters Maria Catricalà 1 · Annarita Guidi 1 Published online: 20 August 2015 © Marta Olivetti Belardinelli and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract Onomatopoeias ( \ old Greek ὀνοματοποιία; ὄνομα ‘name’, ποιέω ‘I make’) are mimetic elements rep- resenting sounds and lexicalizations of sounds (to smack). A large set of problems and studies (based on repositories: Gubern and Gasca in Diccionario de onomatopeyas del comic. Cattedra, Madrid, 2008:1.000 lemmas; corpora: Zlatev in Sound symbolism and cross-modal iconicity in language, Università Roma Tre, Rome, 2013; algorithms: Asaga et al. in Onomatopedia, pp 601–612, 2008) has been related to onomatopoeias since Cratilo’ s analysis of the analogical dimension of verbal language. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to accept a (semantic, functional or grammat- ical) descriptive and explicative model of onomatopoeia, because the rules that constrain processes of selection and construction remain idiosyncratic and variable (Dogana in Le parole dell’incanto. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2002; Catri- calà 2011). This article proposes a classification model based on spatial cognition criteria. The hypothesis (Catri- calà 2011) is that onomatopoeias are related to image schemas (Johnson in The body in the mind. University Press, Chicago, 1987), i.e. to the visual mapping of a movement. We also refer to force dynamic (Talmy in Language typology and lexical description, pp 36–149, 1985; Jackendoff in Semantic structures. MIT Press, Cam- bridge, 1990) as a basic model of conceptual maps (Langacker in Grammar and conceptualization. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1999). Categories are related to the pres- ence of specific phonemes and phoneme clusters, while visual patterns correspond to different image schemas. The association between specific categories of pseudo-ono- matopoeias and specific spatial/movement patterns is also the object of an experiment focused on onomatopoeia interpretation. Most part of data confirms a correlation between image schemas as CONTAINER/CONTAIN- MENT (crunch, plop) or SOURCE-PATH-GOAL (tattarrattat ‘shots’) and an occlusive consonant, while liquid and trill consonants correlate with PATH (vroom). Keywords Onomatopoeia · Image schema · Phonology · Cognitive rhetoric Introduction Onomatopoeias ( \ old Greek όνοματοποιία; όνομα ‘name’, ποιέω ‘I make’) are a rhetorical figure that imitates, through the sounds of spoken languages, calls of animals (baa, bark, meow), natural phenomena (swish, yoooo ‘wind’; plip-plip-ploop, pitter-patter ‘rain’) and noises caused by actions (champ ‘chewing noisily’, zzzz ‘a person or animal sleeping’), movements, machines and various kinds of events (shiiiiing, vzzzt ‘sound of a sword’, rooaaar ‘sound of a car going fast’). In many cases and various languages, onomatopoeias have become words and are used as names, adjectives or verbs. For example, the Italian word gracchiare ‘to croak, to squawk’ or buffetto ‘slick’, the English to smack, the Spanish bisbisar ‘to mumble’, the French blablater ‘to blather’, and ‘Frritt-Flacc’ (coined by Jules Verne to rep- resent the sounds of a rainstorm and also title of the short Maria Catricala ` is author of the first, the fourth and the fifth paragraphs; Annarita Guidi of second and the third paragraphs. & Maria Catricala ` maria.catricala@uniroma3.it Annarita Guidi annaritaguidi@hotmail.com 1 Department of Philosophy, Communication and Visual Arts, Roma Tre University, Via Ostiense, 234, Rome 00146, Italy 123 Cogn Process (2015) 16 (Suppl 1):S175–S178 DOI 10.1007/s10339-015-0693-x