Sound Symbolism and Reduplicated Quadrilaterals in Colloquial Arabic

Abstract

Traditionally the task of studying and compiling inventories of words possessing qualities of sound symbolism and onomatopoeia have fallen to the lexicographers as most Arabic grammarians have seen the phenomena as linguistically irrelevant. In classical Arabic literature, sound symbolism is prevalent in environmental and animal names and sounds, especially in birds and camels. Throughout this analysis I will focus primarily exploring the linguistic functions of quadrilaterals and sound symbolism in modern dialects, which play a limited role with relatively few references in literature.