Onomatopoeia in Maithili: A Correspondence Analysis in Optimality Theory

The linguistic phenomenon of onomatopoeia, which mimics natural sounds, enriches language’s expressiveness and exhibits consistent patterns across human languages. This study analyzes onomatopoeia in Maithili, a language that is spoken in the Mithila region of India and the Terai region of Nepal. The data collected in the field from native speakers of Maithili served as the primary data source, and a raw corpus of Maithili served as the secondary data source, providing a comprehensive list of onomatopoeic expressions in this language. The methodology adopted in this study uses qualitative analysis and descriptive frequency count. It also includes interviews, participant observation, and analysis of literary sources. The study examines the categorization of onomatopoeia and its analysis in Maithili within the framework of Correspondence Theory, a sub-theory of Optimality Theory. The findings reveal that onomatopoeic expressions in Maithili often intersect with reduplication, either entirely or partially, and in some cases, the interaction of reduplication is not observed. Completely reduplicated onomatopoeias are the most frequent, unlike the other two.