Garsažodinių refrenų implozija
Implosion of Onomatopoeic Refrains

Summary/Abstract: Refrains of varying structures abound in all kinds of songs available in the Lithuanian Folk Songbook, be it children’s songs or work songs, family songs, wedding songs, war/historical songs, songs about nature, drink, etc. A refrain, being a primeval way to express a human being’s mood with a yell and consisting of interjections and onomatopoeic words is older than any other word in a Lithuanian folk song. Refrains found in Lithuanian folk songs follow the rules of phonotactics of the Lithuanian language, and those of musical harmony. The results of the study of this underexplored linguistic phenomenon will help to address issues of scientific relevance regarding obscure, unexplored elements of language, and will introduce the reader to a part of the periphery of the lexical system that has never been thoroughly researched. Analysis of the implosion of onomatopoeic refrains in the Lithuanian Folk Songbook has shown that the structure of the syllabic ending group can vary. The implosion of onomatopoeic refrains is dominated by open syllables, which count 92.1 per cent across the material studied. As often as not, syllables end in a vowel (79.5 per cent); endings consisting of a compound diphthong occur much less frequently (9.3 per cent). Closed syllables only total 7.9 per cent. They are defined by monomial implosion (10.6 per cent). Typically, the syllabic endings of onomatopoeic refrains involve the use of type R consonants (82.3 per cent), followed by type T consonants (15.9 per cent), and type S monomial implosion occurring most scarcely (1.8 per cent). Syllables of onomatopoeic refrains that possess a binomial implosive group are highly uncommon (0.6 per cent).

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