ARBITRARINESS OF SOUND SYMBOLYSM IN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE

The article determines that the form of a word bears an arbitrary relation to its meaning accounts only partly for the attested relations between form and meaning in the world’s languages. A long history of research has considered the role of iconicity in language and the existence and role of non-arbitrary properties in language and the use of language. Recent research in English and Japanese suggests a more textured view of vocabulary structure, in which arbitrariness is complemented by iconicity (aspects of form resemble aspects of meaning) and systematicity (statistical regularities in forms predict function). Sound symbolism is the systematic and non-arbitrary link between word and meaning. Although a number of behavioral studies demonstrate that both children and adults are universally sensitive to sound symbolism in mimetic words, the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon have not yet been extensively investigated. Experimental evidence suggests these form to meaning correspondences serve different functions in language processing, development and communication: systematicity facilities category learning by means of phonological cues, iconicity facilitates word learning and communication by means of perceptuomotor analogies, and arbitrariness facilitates meaning individuation through distinctive forms. For one, there can be external reasons why a particular form would go with a given meaning, such as sound symbolism. Also, there are systematicities in English, as well as, in Japanese, where words with similar forms are more likely than chance to have similar meanings. The article also relates to a comparative methods used to test what it is that leads phonæsthemes to be mentally represented, measuring effects of frequency, cue validity, and sound symbolism.