Kathleen,
I agree with Bruce, as far as he goes. However, there are other sorts of word classes than what we call parts of speech, but let me back up first and explain what's meant by "part of speech." A set of words form a lexical category or part of speech if they have common morpho-syntactic properties and if they have some notional semantic properties in common. Words like you ask about can belong to various parts of speech on the basis of these criteria, so "snicker-snack" would be an adverb because it behaves like one syntactically. The other sort of word class is one that is defined by certain common phonotactic and morphological traits, and the most common example of this is what came to be called in African linguistics "ideophones." The term has been used in African linguistics for nearly a century to describe onomatopoeic words and words that, while not onomatopoeic in the usual sense, are still marked by reduplication, repetition, alliteration, and assonance.
In a language like Yoruba, spoken by about 20 million people in Nigeria and Benin, ideophones are identifiable phonologically and morphologically but may belong to almost any open class part of speech, so "kpataki", meaning "important" is a verb/adjective. (The /kp/ is a single sound, the [k] and [p] pronounced simultaneously without and breath or vowel between, and I use the term verb/adjective because they are a single part of speech in the language.) "gbogbo", meaning "all", is a quantifier and a noun. "kpukpa", meaning "red" is a noun and an adjective. The class of ideophones is highly productive. A former student of mine and now a prominent Africanist, Olayiwola Awoyale, is working on a dictionary of Yoruba ideophones that is now up to 25,000 entries. They are frequently used in story telling, and the ability to coin or simply choose apt ideophones is highly regarded. What I've described for Yoruba is, in fact, a sub-Saharan areal feature and is thus true of many African languages.
English also has quite a few ideophones, defined especially by partial reduplication, like hurdy-gurdy, hubbub, willy-nilly, splish-splash, and many others. The term ideophone hasn't really made it into English grammatical vocabulary, but the category is very much like its African counterpart. It's a category of words that crosses parts of speech.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Bruce D. Despain
Sent: Sun 11/25/2007 5:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: onomotopoeia
Kathleen,
I take your question to mean: "To what part of speech do such words as snicker-snack! belong?" The concept of "part of speech" is concerned with their principal motivation for use in a sentence. Virtually any word can be used as any part of speech, on occasion.
My response as a traditionalist would be: "interjection." These words seem to be like the typical interjections of former days: Oh!, Phew!, Ugh!, Wow! In my grammar I have classed these words with the vocatives, used often to address another, such as, God!, Judas Priest!, My gads! Still another subclass would be what I have called the Boolean replies: Yes, No, Absolutely, Undoubtedly, Maybe. All of these words seem to be possible substitutes for a whole sentence in the sense that they may serve as a complete utterance by themselves. For this reason the term "pro-sentence" may possibly serve as well as "interjection."
Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregg Heacock
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: onomotopoeia
Kathleen,
These are all evocative terms. Words tend to be either mimetic or metaphoric. One uses sound evocatively; the other, an image. Mimetic words can replicate sounds, in which case they are onomatopoetic, or they can use sound to replicate an action, like "press" or "push" or "pull." Almost all words ending with "-ash" do this. Words beginning with "st-" usually signify a lack of movement, staying or sticking to one place. The "str-" strains to stretch away from that sticking point, which takes some strength. The term "snicker-snack" seems more of a sound than a word having meaning on its own. Like "chortle," it could evoke a sound while inventing a meaning. Still, it is an example of the pow-er of words. Good that you have one that raises questions.
Gregg
On Nov 25, 2007, at 10:32 AM, Kathi Bethell wrote:
The question of onomotopoeia came up in a class discussion this past week. A student questioned the form class of "Snicker-snack" (as in "the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"). We moved on to animal sounds, comic book sound effects (Pow! Zap! Kerplunk!) and thoroughly amused and confused ourselves.
The cow says "moo."
The mooing cows moved toward the barn.
The cow smiled mooily (okay, we were goofing off by then).
It's easy to identify the verbs, adjectives, adverbs - but what are the onomotopoetic words themselves? Although moo can be a noun (the cow had a loud moo), what is snicker-snack?
Kathleen Bethell
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