Sound symbolism or
phonosemantics is a branch of
linguistics and refers to the idea that vocal sounds have
meaning. In particular, sound symbolism is the idea that
phonemes (written between slashes like this: /b/) carry meaning in and of themselves.
Origin
Back in the
18th century,
Mikhail Lomonosov propagated an idiosyncratic theory that words containing the front vowel sounds E, I, YU should be used when depicting tender subjects, and those with back vowel sounds O, U, Y - to describe things that may cause fear ("like anger, envy, pain, and sorrow").
However, it is
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who is considered to be the founder of modern 'scientific' linguistics. Central to what de Saussure says about words are two related statements: firstly he says that "the sign is arbitrary". This means that he considers the words that we use to indicate things and concepts could be any words - they are essentially just a consensus agreed upon by the speakers of a language, and have no discernible pattern or relationship to the thing. Secondly he says that because words are arbitrary they have meaning only in relation to other words. A dog is a dog, because it is not a cat, or a mouse or a horse etc. These ideas have permeated the study of words since the 19th century.
However Saussure himself is said to have collected examples where sounds and referents were related. Ancient traditions link sounds and meaning, and some modern linguistic research does also.
Types of Sound Symbolism
Margaret Magnus is the author of a comprehensive book designed to explain phonosemantics to the lay reader -
Gods of the Word. This work describes three types of sound symbol using a model first proposed by
Wilhelm von Humboldt (see below):
This is the least significant type of symbolism. It is simply imitative of sounds, or suggests something that makes a sound. Some examples are: crash, bang, whoosh.
Clustering
Words that share a sound sometimes have something in common. If we take for example all of the words that have no prefix or suffix and group them according to meaning, some of them will fall into a number of categories. So we find that there is a group of words beginning with /b/ are about barriers, bulges, bursting, and some other group about being banged, beaten, battered, bruised, blistered and bashed. This proportion is according to Magnus above the average for other letters.
Another hypothesis states that if a word begins with a particular phoneme, then there is likely to be a number of other words starting with that phoneme that refer to the same thing. An example given by Magnus is: if the basic word for 'house' in a given language starts with a /h/, then by clustering, disproportionately many words containing /h/ can be expected to concern housing: hut, home, hacienda, hovel,...
Clustering is language dependent, although closely related languages will have similar clustering relationships.
Iconism
Iconism according to Magnus becomes apparent when comparing words which have the same sort of referent. One way is to look at a group of words that all refer to the same thing, and that differ only in their sound, like 'stamp', stomp', 'tamp', 'tromp', 'tramp', 'step'. An /m/ before the /p/ in some words makes the action more forceful - compare 'stamp' with 'step' or 'tamp'. According to Magnus, the /r/ sets the word in motion, especially after a /t/ so a 'tamp' is in one place, but a 'tramp' goes for a walk. The /p/ in all those words would be what emphasizes the individual steps.
It is suggested by Magnus that this kind of iconism is universal across languages
Phenomimes and psychomimes
Some languages possess a category of words midway between onomatopoeia and usual words. Whereas
onomatopoeia refers to the use of words to imitate actual sounds, there are languages (for example
Japanese) known for having a special class of words that "imitate" soundless states or events, called
phenomimes (when they describe external phenomena) and
psychomimes (when they describe psychological states). On a scale that orders all words according to the correlation between their meaning and their sound, with the sound-imitating words like
meow and
whack at one end, and with the conventional words like
water and
blue at the other end, the phenomimes and the psychomimes would be somewhere in the middle (see
Japanese sound symbolism). In the case of Japanese, for example, such words are learned in early childhood and are considerably more effective than usual words in conveying feelings and states of mind, or in describing states, motions, and transformations in the outside world.
[1] They are not found, however, only in children's vocabulary, but widely used in daily conversation among adults and even in more formal writing.
In the sentence 星がきらきら光っている
hoshi ga kirakira hikatteiru, meaning "The stars are shining sparklingly",
kirakira is a good example of a
phenomime, which conveys the flickering starlight into a sequence of sounds that can be traced back to the original optical phenomenon.
The sentence 電車が込んでいていらいらしていた
densha ga konde ite iraira shite ita ("The train was so crowded it was getting on my nerves.") gives an example of a
psychomime: the word
iraira describes the irritated state of mind due to the train's being crowded.
History of Phonosemantics
Several ancient traditions exist which talk about an archetypal relationship between sounds and ideas. Some of these are discussed below, but there are others as well. If we include a link between
letters and ideas then the list includes the Viking Runes, the Hebrew Kabbalah, the Arab Abjad, etc.. References of this kind are very common in The Upanishads, The Nag Hammadi Library, the Celtic Book of
Taliesin, as well as early Christian works, the Shinto Kototama, and Shingon Buddhism.
Plato and the Cratylus Dialogue
In
Cratylus,
Plato has
Socrates commenting on the origins and correctness of various names and words. When
Hermogenes asks if he can provide another hypothesis on how signs come into being (his own is simply 'convention'), Socrates initially suggests that they fit their referents in virtue of the sounds they are made of:
- "Now the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an excellent instrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter for this purpose: for example, in the actual words rein and roe he represents motion by rho; also in the words tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged); and again, in words such as krouein (strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise), thruptein (break), kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sorts of movements he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as I imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to express motion" - Cratylus.
- (note this is an open source translation available at Internet Classics Archive)
However, faced by an overwhelming number of counterexamples given by Hermogenes, Socrates has to admit that "my first notions of original names are truly wild and ridiculous".
Upanishads
The
Upanishads contain a lot of material about sound symbolism, for instance:
- "The mute consonants represent the earth, the sibilants the sky, the vowels heaven. The mute consonants represent fire, the sibilants air, the vowels the sun… The mute consonants represent the eye, the sibilants the ear, the vowels the mind" - Aitrareya-Aranya-Upanishad
Shingon Buddhism
Kūkai, the founder of
Shingon wrote his
Sound, word, reality in the
9th century which relates all sounds to the voice of the
Dharmakaya Buddha.
Early Western Phonosemantics
The idea of phonosemantics was sporadically discussed during the
Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. In
1690,
Locke wrote against the idea in an essay called
An Essay on Human Understanding. His argument was that if there were any connection between sounds and ideas, then we would all be speaking the same language, but this is an over-generalisation. Leibniz's book
New Essays on Human Understanding published in
1765 contains a point by point critique of Locke's essay. Leibniz picks up on the generalization used by Locke and adopts a less rigid approach: clearly there is no perfect correspondence between words and things, but neither is the relationship completely arbitrary, although he seems vague about what that relationship might be.
(adapted from a literature review by Magnus - see website below)
Modern Phonosemantics
In 1836 Wilhelm von Humboldt published
Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. It is here that he establishes the three kinds of relationship between sounds and ideas as discussed above under
Types of Sound Symbolism. Below is a sample of researchers in the field of Phonosemantics.
Otto Jespersen suggests that: “Sound symbolism, we may say, makes some words more fit to survive.”
Dwight Bolinger of Harvard University was the primary proponent of phonosemantics through the late 40’s and the 50’s. In 1949, he published
The Sign is Not Arbitrary. He concluded that
morphemes cannot be defined as the minimal meaning-bearing units, in part because ‘
meaning’ is so ill-defined, and in part because there are obvious situations in which smaller units are meaning-bearing.
Ivan Fónagy (1963) correlates phonemes with metaphors. For example, nasal and velarized vowels are quite generally considered ‘dark’, front vowels as ‘fine’ and ‘high’. Unvoiced stops have been considered ‘thin’ by European linguists, whereas the fricatives were labelled ‘raw’ and ‘hairy’ by the Greeks.
Hans Marchand provided the first extensive list of English
phonesthemes. He wrote, for example, that “/l/ at the end of a word symbolizes prolongation, continuation” or “nasals at the end of a word express continuous vibrating sounds.”
Gérard Genette published the only full length history of phonosemantics,
Mimologics (1976). In 450 pages, Genette details the evolution of the linguistic iconism among linguists and poets, in syntax, morphology and phonology.
(partially adapted from a literature review by Magnus - see website below)
Relationship with Neuroscience
In the
2003 BBC Reith Lectures,
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran outlined his research into the links between
brain structure and function. In the fourth lecture of the series he describes the phenomena of
synesthesia in which people experience, for example sounds in terms of colours, or sounds in terms of tastes. One type of synesthesia has people seeing numbers, letters of the alphabet, or even musical notes, as having a distinct colour. Based on his research Ramachandran proposes a model for how language might have evolved. The theory is interesting because it may explain how we make
metaphors and how sounds can be metaphors for images – why for example sounds can be described as bright or dull. In explaining how
language might have evolved from cross activation of adjacent areas in the brain, Ramachandran notes 4 crucial factors, not all related to language, but which combined might well have resulted in
the emergence of it. Two of these processes are of particular interest to us:
Synesthetic cross modal abstraction: i.e. we recognise properties that sounds and images have in common and abstract them to store them independently. The sounds and shapes of the objects have characteristics in common that can be abstracted, say a sharp, cutting quality of a word, and the shape it describes - what Ramachandran called the '
Bouba/kiki effect' based on the results of an experiment with two abstract shapes and asking people to relate the nonsense words
bouba and
kiki to them. The effect is real and observable, and repeatable.
Built in preexisting cross activation. Ramachandran points out that areas of the brain which appear to be involved in the mix-ups in synesthesia are adjacent to each other physically, and that cross-wiring, or cross activation, could explain synesthesia and our ability to make metaphors. He notes that the areas that control the muscles around the mouth are also adjacent to the visual centres, and suggests that certain words appear to make our mouth imitate the thing we are describing. Examples of this might be words like teeny weeny, diminutive to describe small things; large or enormous to describe big things.
Notes
See also
External links
Sources
- Magnus, M. Gods of the Word : Archetypes in the Consonants. (Truman State University Press, July 1999)
For the journal, see .
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a
linguist.
..... Click the link for more information. In linguistics, meaning is the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating through language. Restated, the communication of meaning is the purpose and function of language.
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phoneme is the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes meaning. Phonemes are not the physical segments themselves, but abstractions of them. An example of a phoneme would be the /t/ found in words like tip,
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The 18th Century lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar.
Historians sometimes specifically define the 18th Century otherwise for the purposes of their work.
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For other uses, see Lomonosov (disambiguation).
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (
Михаи́л Васи́льевич..... Click the link for more information. Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced [fɛʁdi'nɑ̃ də so'syʁ]) (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the
..... Click the link for more information.
Magaret H. Magnus is a researcher in phonosemantics.
Works:
- Dictionary of English Sound http://www.trismegistos.com/
- 1999, Gods of the Word : Archetypes in the Consonants, Truman State University Press, ISBN 978-0943549521.
..... Click the link for more information. Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt (June 22, 1767 – April 8, 1835), government functionary, diplomat, philosopher, founder of Humboldt Universität in Berlin, friend of Goethe and especially of Schiller, is especially remembered as a
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For the supervillain, see .
Onomatopoeia (occasionally spelled
onomatopœia) is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click," "buzz," or "bluuuh," or animal noises
..... Click the link for more information. For the supervillain, see .
Onomatopoeia (occasionally spelled
onomatopœia) is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click," "buzz," or "bluuuh," or animal noises
..... Click the link for more information. This article contains Japanese text.
Without proper ,
you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji or kana.
Japanese
日本語
..... Click the link for more information. This article describes sound symbolic or mimetic words in the Japanese language. Most languages have such words; for example, "bang", "zap", "ding", "slither", "pop", etc. in English.
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Taliesin (c. 534 – c. 599) is the earliest poet of the Welsh language whose work has survived. His name is associated with the Book of Taliesin, a book of poems that was written down in the Middle Ages (John Gwenogvryn Evans dated it to around 1275).
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Cratylus (Κρατυλος) is the name of a dialogue by Plato, written in approximately 360 BC. In the dialogue, Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is,
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PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on.
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SOCRATES is the European Community action programme in the field of education. The second phase of the programme covers the period January 1 2000 to December 31 2006. It draws on the experiences of the first phase (1995-1999) building on the successful aspects of the programme,
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Hermogenes is a Greek name that may refer to:
- a follower of Socrates, who lived in the late 5th century BCE-early 4th century BCE and was mentioned by Plato and Xenophon. He was a half-brother of the wealthy Callias III.
..... Click the link for more information. The Upanishads (Devanagari: उपनिषद्, IAST: upaniṣad) are regarded as part of the Vedas and as such form part of the Hindu scriptures.
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Shingon (眞言, 真言 " ", also kongōjō 金剛乘, 金剛乗 pinyin jīngāngchéng " "), is a major school of Japanese Buddhism, and is the other branch of Vajrayana Buddhism besides Tibetan
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As a means of recording the passage of time the 9th century was the century that lasted from 801 to 900.
Western European
"Dark Ages" applied later to this period
..... Click the link for more information. The Trikaya doctrine (Sanskrit, literally "Three bodies or personalities"; 三身 Chinese: Sānshén, Japanese: sanjin) is an important Buddhist teaching both on the nature of reality, and what a Buddha is.
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buddha (help info ) (Sanskrit: Awakened) is any being who has become fully awakened (enlightened), and has experienced Nirvana.
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Middle Ages form the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three "ages": the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times.
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Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento; Spanish: Renacimiento), was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe.
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8th century - 9th century - 10th century
850s 860s 870s - 880s - 890s 900s 910s
885 886 887 - 888 - 889 890 891
:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
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John Locke, (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory.
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17th century - 18th century - 19th century
1730s 1740s 1750s - 1760s - 1770s 1780s 1790s
1762 1763 1764 - 1765 - 1766 1767 1768
:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
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- For the Norwegian comedian, see Otto Jespersen (comedian).
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or
Otto Jespersen [ʌtˢo ˈjɛsb̥ɐsn̩]..... Click the link for more information. Dwight Le Merton Bolinger (August 18,1907—February 1992) was an American linguist and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He began his career as the first editor of the "Among the New Words" feature for American Speech.
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In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the
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