Tai Lieu Chat Luong Sound symbolism Sound symbolism is the study of the relationship between the sound of an utterance and its meaning. In this interdisciplinary collection of new studies, twenty-four leading scholars discuss the role of sound symbolism in a theory of language. They consider sound-symbolic processes in a wide range of languages from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. Beginning with an evocative typology of sound-symbolic processes, they go on to examine not only the well-known areas of study, such as onomatopoeia and size—sound symbolism, but also less frequently discussed topics such as the sound-symbolic value of vocatives and of involuntary noises, and the marginal areas of "conventional sound symbolism," such as phonesthemes.
The book concludes with a series of studies on the biological basis of sound symbolism, and draws comparisons with the communication systems of other species. This is a definitive work on the role of sound symbolism in a theory of language. The wide-ranging new research presented here reveals that sound symbolism plays a far more significant role in language than scholarship has hitherto recognized. Sound symbolism Edited by LEANNE HINTON, JOHANNA NICHOLS, AND JOHN J.
OHALA University of California at Berkeley I CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1994 First published 1994 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Sound symbolism/edited by Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John J.S68 1995 414-dc20 93-34988 CIP ISBN 0 521 45219 8 hardback Transferred to digital printing 2004 Contents List of contributors page ix 1 Introduction: Sound-symbolic processes 1 LEANNE H I N T O N , JOHANNA NICHOLS, AND JOHN OHALA PARTI Native American languages north of Mexico 2 Symbolism in Nez Perce 15 HARUO AOKI 3 Nootkan vocative vocalism and its implications 23 WILLIAM H. 4 Relative motivation in denotational and indexical sound symbolism of Wasco-Wishram Chinookan 40 MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN PART II Native languages of Latin America 5 Symbolism and change in the sound system of Huastec 63 TERRENCE KAUFMAN 6 Evidence for pervasive synesthetic sound symbolism in ethnozoological nomenclature 76 BRENT BERLIN 7 Noise words in Guarani 94 MARGARET LANGDON PART in Asia 8 i: big, a: small 107 GERARD DIFFLOTH List of contents 9 Tone, intonation, and sound symbolism in Lahu: loading the syllable canon 115 JAMES A. MATISOFF 10 An experimental investigation into phonetic symbolism as it relates to Mandarin Chinese 130 RANDY J. LAPOLLA 11 Palatalization in Japanese sound symbolism 148 SHOKO HAMANO PART iv Australia and Africa 12 Yir-Yiront ideophones 161 BARRY ALPHER 13 African ideophones 178 G.
TUCKER CHILDS PART v Europe 14 Regular sound development, phonosymbolic orchestration, disambiguation of homonyms 207 YAKOV MALKIEL 15 Modern Greek ts: beyond sound symbolism 222 BRIAN D. JOSEPH 16 On levels of analysis of sound symbolism in poetry, with an application to Russian poetry 237 TOM M. PRIESTLY 17 Finnish and Gilyak sound symbolism - the interplay between system and history 249 ROBERT AUSTERLITZ P A R T vi English 18 Phonosyntactics 263 JOAN A. SERENO 19 Aural images 276 RICHARD RHODES 20 Inanimate imitatives in English 293 ROBERT L.
OSWALT PART V I I The biological bases of sound symbolism 21 Some observations on the function of sound in clinical work 309 PETER F. OSTWALD List of contents 22 The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch 325 JOHN J. OHALA 23 Sound symbolism and its role in non-human vertebrate communication 348 EUGENE S. MORTON Index 366 Contributors BARRY ALPHER Journals Division, American Society for Microbiology, Washington DC HARUO AOKI Department of East Asian Languages, University of California, Berkeley ROBERT AUSTERLITZ Department of Linguistics, Columbia University BRENT BERLIN Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley G.
TUCKER CHILDS Department of Linguistics, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg GERARD DIFFLOTH Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University SHOKO HAMANO Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The George Washington University LEANNE H I N T O N Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley WILLIAM H. Department of English, University of Nevada, Reno BRIAN D. JOSEPH Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University TERRENCE KAUFMAN Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh MARGARET LANGDON Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego List of contributors RANDY J. LAPOLLA Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan YAKOV MALKIEL Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley JAMES A.
MATISOFF Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley EUGENE S. MORTON National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC JOHANNA NICHOLS Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of California, Berkeley JOHN J. OHALA Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley PETER F. OSTWALD Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California, San Francisco Medical Center ROBERT L.
OSWALT California Indian Language Center, Kensington, California TOM M. PRIESTLY Department of Slavic and East European Studies, University of Alberta RICHARD RHODES Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley JOAN A. SERENO Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Department of Psychology, Cornell University MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago 1 Introduction: sound-symbolic processes LEANNE HINTON, JOHANNA NICHOLS, AND JOHN OHALA Hermogenes. I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use; but that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as barbarians.
Introduction In general, linguistic theory assumes that the relation between sound and meaning is arbitrary. Any aspect of language that goes against this assumption has tradi- tionally been considered as only a minor exception to the general rule. Over the past few decades, there has been a great accumulation of cross-linguistic data on sound symbolism. Recently, scholars interested in sound symbolism came together at a conference to attempt to synthesize the data and discuss its implications, in order to begin the determination of the rightful role of sound symbolism in a theory of lan- guage.
The papers in this volume represent thefindingsof the conference. We must conclude, from the combined work shown here, that sound symbolism plays a con- siderably larger role in language than scholarship has hitherto recognized. In this introduction, we will examine the nature of sound symbolism in general. The term "sound symbolism" has been used for a wide array of phenomena in human languages, related but each with its own distinguishing characteristics.
We will begin, then, with a typology of sound symbolism. We then explore the general characteristics of sound-symbolic form and meaning. A typology of sound symbolism Sound symbolism is the direct linkage between sound and meaning. Human language has aspects where sound and meaning are completely linked, as in Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John Ohala involuntary utterances such as cries of pain or hiccups.
In these cases sound only has "meaning" in that it directly reflects an internal state of the body or mind. A scale can be set up between these utterances and completely conventional, arbitrary language, where sound and meaning presumably have no direct relationship at all. We have found it reasonable to divide the overall concept of sound symbolism into four different categories, which are arranged below according to degree of direct linkage between sound and meaning. Corporeal sound symbolism This is the use of certain sounds or intonation patterns to express the internal state of the speaker, emotional or physical.
This category includes involuntary, "symp- tomatic" sounds such as coughing or hiccupping, and ranges through expressive intonation, expressive voice quality, and interjections. An argument could be made that this is not properly sound symbolism, because in this case the sound is not a true symbol, but rather a sign or symptom. We nevertheless give it a place in this typology and in this volume, because it lives around the edges of sound symbolism, and is related to the biological roots of sound symbolism (as well as language in general). Much of corporeal sound symbolism is not commonly written.
Either it forms part of the suprasegmental features of utterances, expressed as intonation or voice quality, or else it is expressed in unconventionalized utterances. Corporeal sound- symbolic utterances are typically structurally simple, non-segmentable vocali- zations. In English writing traditions, it is primarily in comic strips that we find expressive intonation and voice quality portrayed, by visual effects such as letter size, shape and color; and such forms as Aaughl and Achoo! are attempts to write corporeal utterances that do not fit easily into the sound system of the conventional vocabulary. Corporeal sound-symbolic utterances are directly tied to the emotional or physical state of the speaker, and as such cannot easily be objectified into referential speech.
They are, therefore, generally complete utterances, rarely occurring as parts of more complex sentences (except as direct quotations). The unconventionality of corporeal utterances, their structural simplicity, and their defiance of writing makes them an understudied area of human speech. In this volume, the role of human utterances expressive of physical state is discussed in the paper by Ostwald, who develops a typology of the ways in which corporeal utterances reflect disease. We should also mention here a type of sound symbolism related but tangential to the symptomatic utterances of corporeal sound symbolism: vocatives formally have certain similarities to corporeal sound symbolism, but with the function of gaining the attention of some hearer.
The use of vocalization to get the attention of another individual is a basic function of vocal communication throughout the animal kingdom. There is a good deal of overlap between corporeal and vocative utteran- Introduction ces: the crying of a child or the scream of someone in serious danger are both directly symptomatic and vocative in nature. Some corporeal utterances are regularly manipulated by speakers within linguistic interactions, as vocative or turn-taking signals. Clearing the throat or coughing are often used for these communicative functions.
Vocatives, however, go beyond the bounds of corporeal sound symbolism in that they often use the normal vocabulary of language, such as names (see Jacobsen, this volume). Nevertheless, even name vocation involves such expressive features as increased amplitude and segment duration. Since vocation has the specific function of gaining someone's attention, vocatives have the special feature of being designed to suit the acoustic limitations of the external environ- ment and the auditory and mental requisites of the hearer (in so far as the speaker can understand and perform these). Thus our use of whistles and bilabial clicks to call dogs is based on their higher center of hearing; and calls to a distant hearer are different from close-up calls.
Corporeal utterances have many universal components, both in human lan- guages and across species. The paper by Morton discusses some of these cross- species universals, including differences between long-distance and close-up calls. Imitative sound symbolism This relates to onomatopoeic words and phrases representing environmental sounds (e., bang, bow-wow, swish, knock, and rap). Again, imitatives include many utterances that utilize sound patterns outside of conventional speech and are difficult to portray in writing, such as representations of bird and animal sounds, children's imitations of sirens, etc.
Nevertheless, imitatives are much better represented in the linguistic literature than corporeal sound symbolism, because so much onomatopoeic vocabulary does become conventionalized. It is not directly tied to emotional or physical state, the way most corporeal sound symbolism is, but instead has a very important role in referential speech, and can be objectified in a way that expressive sound symbolism cannot. In this volume, Rhodes' paper "Aural images" sets up a scale for discussing degree of conventionalization of onomatopoeic words - his "wild" and "tame" vocabulary. And while "wild" imitative words are not found in dictionaries, there is nevertheless a huge tradition of writing them in comic strips, as discussed by Oswalt.