Basque and Linguistic Mimesis

Abstract

This article offers a unified description and explanation of some of the most characteristic phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical procedures of an onomatopoeic, phono-symbolic, and expressive nature in Basque. To this end, in the first sections of the paper, the fundamental rudiments of what can be called linguistic mimesis or glotomimesis are introduced; this phenomenon is based on the imitative linguistic expression of basic human perceptions and sensations. In this way, the different phenomena analyzed in the present study can be seen as a manifestation of a single unique and coherent property of the Basque language and not as a heterogeneous and heteroclite set of linguistic expressions with little or no relation among them.