Linguistic Ecological Interpretation of Onomatopoeic Motivation of the Kam Language Vocabulary: A Comparative Study with English and Chinese

The ecological characteristics of a language are shaped by its linguistic ecological environment. Historically, the Kam language had no writing system for a long time. From the perspective of language ecology, the writing system created with Latin letters in the 1950s is equivalent to a prosthetic leg for the "naturally handicapped" Kam language. The long-term absence of writing means that the Kam language vocabulary cannot rely on the shape of characters to express meaning like the Chinese language, and can only "find another way out" in the direction of "expressing meaning through sound". Therefore, similar to English, there are a large number of secondary onomatopoeic words in the Kam language vocabulary. "Onomatopoeia", based on iconicity, can be regarded as a significant ecological feature of the Kam language vocabulary. This feature helps to reduce the memory burden of its users. Ultimately, this reflects the economic principle of human language. This research broadens the perspective of Kam language research, provides new ideas for in-depth understanding of the formation and development of the Kam language vocabulary system. At the same time, it also provides new cases and materials for the development of language ecology theory. At the practical level, this study helps us better understand and protect the Kam language and culture, promotes the development and utilization of language resources in ethnic minority areas, provides a reference for building a harmonious language ecological environment, and also provides a language view from a different perspective for our language teaching.