A Comparative Analysis of Word-Formation Processes Involved in the Formation of Onomatopoeic Words in Russian and Persian Languages

Having been endowed with forms and meanings different from other words in a language as well as other special structural features such as reduplicative structure, onomatopoeic words are regarded as linguistic universals, widely involved in the formation and derivation of new onomatopoeic words. Examining the structure of onomatopoeic words and mulling over their semantic properties in Russian and Persian languages, this study found that the general process of onomatopoeic words’ derivation is different in the two languages. Moreover, this study indicated that typological differences between Russian, as an inflectional and agglutinative language, and Persian, as an analytical and agglutinative language, play pivotal roles in the construction of different patterns as well as different word-formation processes, governing the formation of onomatopoeic words. Moreover, the study of semantic aspects of word-formation processes illustrated that this class of words have a category-building role in Russian. This is while in Persian onomatopoeic words, in addition to the primary onomatopoeic and categorical meanings, another semantic layer including certain aspects such as plurality, diversity, hypocorism, and continuance is added to the derived onomatopoeic words.