Phonosemantics

In linguistics, sound symbolism, phonesthesia or phonosemantics is the idea that vocal sounds or phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves.

Origin

In the 18th century, Mikhail Lomonosov propagated a theory that words containing certain sounds should bear certain meanings; for instance, the front vowel sounds E, I, YU should be used when depicting tender subjects and those with back vowel sounds O, U, Y when describing things that may cause fear (“like anger, envy, pain, and sorrow”).

However, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is considered to be the founder of modern 'scientific' linguistics. Central to what de Saussure says about words are two related statements: First, he says that “the sign is arbitrary”. 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. Second, 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.

Types

Margaret Magnus is the author of a comprehensive book designed to explain phonosemantics to the lay reader: Gods in the Word. This work describes three types of sound symbolism using a model first proposed by Wilhelm von Humboldt (see below):

Onomatopoeia

See also: Onomatopoeia 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”, and “whoosh”.

Clustering

Words that share a sound sometimes have something in common. If we take, for example, 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/ that are about barriers, bulges and bursting, and some other group of /b/ words that are 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, hovel, habitat…

Sound symbolic words cannot be broken down into smaller units of meaning. Sound clusters are not treated as morphemes. Words beginning with /gl/ (glitter, gleam, glow, glisten, etc.) pertain to light reflection but [gl] on its own has no meaning nor does every other word with /gl/ refer to light.

Clustering is language dependent, although closely related languages will have similar clustering relationships.

Semantic/sensible Component cluster of words / compound word groups Phonetic/non-sense Component (for pronunciation)
B banged , beaten , battered , bruised , blistered
H house , hut , habitat , hovel , home
Gl glow , glamour , glitter , gloomy , glisten ,
Bl blow , blue , blunder
Gn gnosis , knowledge , cognition

CONCERNING THE PREDICAMENT OF PRONUNCIATION

Compound Ideogram Pronunciation and Meaning Constituent Radical -1 Constituent Radical -2
chinese character chinese sound and english meaning semantic component for pronounciation
河 hé “river” 水 - shui (water ) 氵 ( 可 - ke ) may , can , able
湖 hú “lake” 水 - shui (water) 氵 ( 胡 - hu ) how , why , that , barbarian
流 liú “stream” 水 - shui (water) 氵 ( 㐬 - liu )penant , wild , barren
沖 , chōng “surge“ 水 - shui ( water) 氵 ( 中 - zhong ) central , centre
滑 huá “slippery” 水 - shui (water) 氵 (骨 - gu ) bone , skeleton , frame
洋 yáng “ocean” 水 - shui (water) 氵 羊 (yáng) “sheep”
mantrakshar character english sound /meaning semantic component Phonetic Component
spray water sitting person
fog water air
juice water fruit

PHONOSEMANTICS ENGLISH

A first , foremost ,
An none , without
B
bl air
bh light
bh fire
C
C Flat
C cup
D
E
F
G
gh - concave , convex
H
I
J life
Jny Knowledge , know , brain , sense
K
L water , pipe ,
M self
Mn Mental , science , consciousness
N n negative
N n particle
n n parts
n n crooked
O
P
Q
R actions , flow
S
sh bad , poison , danger
sh good , nice , beautiful , pure
T
th location , there , thar
th shapes , solid
U
V sound
W
X - crossing , cutting
Y
Z last