Japanese language have a special group of words which repeat mostly two
syllable word like pera pera, para para, jito jito, suku suku, aka aka, zuki
zuki – you can name it, that are used adverbially.

They look like onomatopoeias, but they are not. They don’t reflect any sound,
and they are all used adverbially, not as interjection.

I am curious to know what is a grammatical terminology in both Japanese and
English to call such a group of words. Would you please teach me?
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2016-01-10T22:25:01.607
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words terminology
What is a grammatical terminology to describe the group of the refrain of two syllable words like pera-pera, don-don, iki-iki?
擬声語{ぎせいご}・擬音語{ぎおんご} and 擬態語{ぎたいご}・擬情語{ぎじょうご}  
In general: Onomatopoeia (Ideophone).  
Specifically, in order, words that mimic: voices, sounds, states, and
feelings.

[See the wiki
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_sound_symbolism).
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2016-01-10T22:48:47.520
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So-called 擬{ぎ}態{たい}語{ご} like ギラギラ, クルクル are often referred to in English as
**_mimetic words_** , _mimesis_ , or _mimetics_. These identifiers seem to be
more popular than _ideophones_ on this site. See the search results:
"[mimetic](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/search?q=mimetic)" vs
"[ideophone](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/search?q=ideophone)".

Strictly speaking, these words have a broader sense, and seem to include
onomatopoeic words like ニャア, ピーポー. [The Wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_sound_symbolism) seems to be
written from this standpoint.

But practically, they seem to be used as the opposing terms to onomatopoeia.
You can easily find articles titled "Japanese onomatopoeia and mimetic words"
and so on. So I think we can safely assume that when we see _mimetics_ in
Japanese language contexts, it mainly refers to 擬態語 which are not mimic
sounds/voices.
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2016-06-04T17:52:23.343
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