540. ENGLISH - Sound Symbolism

Sound Symbolism

 

Definition:

An association between particular sound sequences and particular meanings in speech.

The phenomenon of sound symbolism is highly controversial in language studies. See Examples and Observations, below.

See also:

• Ten Titillating Types of Sound Effects in Language
• Arbitrariness
• Echo Word
• Exercise in Identifying Sound Effects in Poetry and Prose: Alliteration, Assonance, and Rhyme
• Onomatope
• Onomatopoeia
• Onomatopoeia in "The Tunnel" by William H. Gass
• Phonestheme
• Reduplicative
• Symbolism

 

Examples and Observations:

• "Here's an experiment. You're in a spaceship approaching a planet. You've been told there are two races on it, one beautiful and friendly to humans, the other unfriendly, ugly and mean-spirited. You also know that one of these groups is called the Lamonians; the other is called the Grataks. Which is which?
  
  "Most people assume that the Lamonians are the nice guys. It's all a matter of sound symbolism. Words with soft sounds such as 'l,' 'm,' and 'n,' and long vowels or diphthongs, reinforced by a gentle polysyllabic rhythm, are interpreted as 'nicer' than words with hard sounds such as 'g' and 'k,' short vowels and an abrupt rhythm."
  
  
• Fl- Words
  "In English, words beginning with fl-, such as fly, flee, flow, flimsy, flicker, and fluid, are often suggestive of lightness and quickness.

Also, there are many words in English that begin with gl- and refer to brightness (such as gleam, glisten, glow, glint, glitter, and glimmer)."

• Gl- Words
  "Sound symbolism is often the result of a secondary association.

The words glow, gleam, glimmer, glare, glisten, glitter, glacier, and glide suggest that in English the combination gl- conveys the idea of sheen and smoothness.

Against this background, glory, glee and glib emanate brightness by their very form, glance and glimpse reinforce our conclusion (because eyesight is inseparable from light), and glib has no other choice than to denote specious luster, and, indeed, in the sixteenth century, when it became known in English, it meant 'smooth and slippery.'"

• Over the -ump
  "Consider the following group:

hump, lump, mumps, plump, rump, stump

These all have a rhyme -ump and they all refer to a rounded, or at least non-pointy, protuberance. Now consider what bump means. It can refer to contact involving something weighty whether it be hips, bottoms, or shoulders, or a slow-moving vehicle or vessel, but not the contact of a point with a surface, such as a pencil tapping a window pane.

The crump of an exploding shell fits in here, as does thump. You might also consider rumble, and possibly mumble and tumble, though admittedly this is -umble rather than -ump.

One has to allow that there can be words with -ump that do not fit the correlation. Trump is an example.

However, there are enough examples to suggest there is a connection between sound and meaning in one set of words.

You might also note that Humpty-Dumpty was no stick insect, and Forrest Gump wasn't too sharp."

• Dints and Dents
  "[W]hy is it that dints sound smaller than dents? There is presumably some sound symbolism going on here. Think of words like teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, mini and wee. They all sound small!

A chip sounds smaller than a chop. So do slits compared with slots, chinks compared to chunks and dints compared to dents.

'Many a mickle makes a muckle' is an old saying that has virtually disappeared. Even if you haven't a clue what a mickle is, I am sure you agree it has to be smaller than a muckle. In fact, historically mickles and muckles are the same word. Like dints and dents, they arose as alternative pronunciations, although I suspect their vowels have always been symbolic of size."

• The Problem With Sound Symbolism
  "The fundamental thesis underlying the field of sound symbolism has always been controversial, because it appears to be so transparently wrong. The Sound Symbolic Hypothesis is that the meaning of a word is partially affected by its sound (or articulation).

If the sound of a word affects its meaning, then you should be able to tell what a word means just by hearing it.

There should be only one language. In spite of this, there has always been a fairly substantial group of linguists who do not dismiss the possibility that the form of a word somehow affects its meaning."

• Sound Symbolism and the Evolution of Language
  "Given that we share many of our sound-symbolic aspects of language with other species, it is quite possible that in sound symbolism we are seeing the precursors of fully formed human language.

In fact, it seems quite reasonable to say that in all advanced vocalizers (especially humans, many birds, and many cetaceans) we can see a basic sound-symbolic communication system overlaid by elaborations which could be termed arbitrary in their relationship to meaning."