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Sound symbolism: the role of word sound in meaning
Author(s) -
Svantesson JanOlof
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.526
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1939-5086
pISSN - 1939-5078
DOI - 10.1002/wcs.1441
Subject(s) - sound symbolism , onomatopoeia , linguistics , meaning (existential) , sound (geography) , convention , sign (mathematics) , psychology , iconicity , communication , philosophy , sociology , acoustics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , social science , physics , psychotherapist
The question whether there is a natural connection between sound and meaning or if they are related only by convention has been debated since antiquity. In linguistics, it is usually taken for granted that ‘the linguistic sign is arbitrary,’ and exceptions like onomatopoeia have been regarded as marginal phenomena. However, it is becoming more and more clear that motivated relations between sound and meaning are more common and important than has been thought. There is now a large and rapidly growing literature on subjects as ideophones (or expressives), words that describe how a speaker perceives a situation with the senses, and phonaesthemes, units like English gl‐ , which occur in many words that share a meaning component (in this case ‘light’: gleam, glitter , etc.). Furthermore, psychological experiments have shown that sound symbolism in one language can be understood by speakers of other languages, suggesting that some kinds of sound symbolism are universal. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1441. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1441 This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain Linguistics > Linguistic Theory