Re: ONOMATOPOEIA: Check out "Cross Linguistic Phonethemes"

In a message dated 3/31/02 02.25.42 PM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes:

>Well, wrong hypothesis (that the meaning of a phoneme derives from its
>pronunciation, the simple fact that there are so many different kinds of
>languages proves it wrong) and partial database (all languages presented
>but one are Indo-European, and the correspondances shown are actually
cognates,
>so the appearance of the same string is explained historically rather than
>by a supposed "sound-meaning". For the only non-Indo-European language
>presented, Indonesian, more than half the words shown are actually loanwords
>from Indo-European languages, and thus prove absolutely nothing!) brings to
>stupid claims like those. I really can't understand why people can't accept
that the
>sign is mostly arbitrary (of course, there are onomatopoeic words, but even
those
>are culturally conditioned. Look at the Japanese onomatopoeia for instance.
>Most Westerners wouldn't recognise the sound it is supposed to represent),
and
>that nothing in the sound of the word "straight" has straightness in it,
except
>in the ears of those who speak English...
In a message dated 3/31/02 05.41.53 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:

>Well, it is true that certain sounds have a tendency towards certain
>connotations, like /i/ tending to denote smallness, nearness, etc., and
>/u/ or /A/ the opposite.  But, those are only statistical tendencies,
>frequently violated, as in "big" or "small"
    I, of course, don't buy into that Bow-Wow theory of language myself, at
least not entirely.
    But there is some merit to the idea that one general tendency of
linguistic sound-symbolism is to have higher frequency vowels - like/i/- in
words connoting "smallness" and lower frequency vowels - /a/-to-/O/, esp'ly
rounded vowels - to connote largeness. /i/ is associated with soft, quiet
sounds, and /a/ with loud sounds, the contrast stemming from their acoustic
energy and intrinsic amplitude - an association that is widespread across
languages of the world (not just IndoEuro or Japanese; recent data from
African, Altaic, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Thai, Native American and Pacific
Rim languages have evidence of this tendency as well [_Sound Symbolism_
Hinton et al, 1994, Cambridge University Press]).

    Marjorie Chan on the /m/ sound (one of my favourite sounds ;):

    ... /m/: it has a relatively long duration of  lip closure, during which
time the oral cavity is thrown into total darkness. One would, therefore,
expect some other languages in the world to use /m/ (or a labial consonant,
more generally), for conveying one or more of the concepts of ‘dark’,
‘cover’, and ‘blind’.
    The selection of /m/, a segment that is not only labial ([grave]), but
also voiced, or sonorous ([grave]). The association  of /m/, per se, with
heaviness and melancholy in Chinese may not reflect universal tendencies, but
the association of grave segments in general do, as noted earlier with
Priestly’s (1994) observations about Russian poetry.
    English words such as ‘dark’, ‘doom’, ‘gloom’, for example, have grave
segments, as do ‘murky’, ‘melancholy’, ‘moody’, ‘mournful’, and so forth.
 Some of the words, such as ‘doom’, ‘gloom’, ‘murky’, ‘moody’, and
‘mournful’ contain an entire string of sonorous segments. The presence of
the back vowel, /u/, heightens and intensifies the sense of heaviness and dark
ness.

    So... there maybe _some_ degree of sound-symbolic tendencies (see, I will
NOT use the word "universal" cuz there are bound to be exceptions to every
so-call blinkin' "rule") based on the actual manner of sound-articulation
bio-mechanics and the sound frequency emitted:

CONCEPTS ‘SMALL’ AND ‘LARGE’ IN SOUND SYMBOLISM

        a.  ‘SMALL’ conveyed by the use of:
            i.  High tone
            ii. Vowels with high F2
                e.g.,   [i, ", y, e]
            iii.    Consonants with high acoustic frequency
                e.g.,   [acute]:    apical and palatal C’s
                        [sharp]: palatalized C’s
                        voiceless C’s
                        ejectives

        b.  ‘LARGE’ conveyed by the use of:
            i.  Low tone
            ii. Vowels with low F2
                e.g., [A, ç, u]
            iii.    Consonants with low acoustic frequency
                e.g.,   [grave]:    labials and back velars
                        [flat]: labialized, retroflexed, velarized, or
                                pharyngealized C’s
                        voiced C’s

    It is interesting to note that 3 languages have notably high numbers of
sound-symbolic lexemes: Manchu, Korean, and Japanese. Oddly all three are not
exactly related linguistically even tho' they all come from the same general
area of north East Asia (Manchu is Altaic, Korean is a Sino-influenced
Isolate, & Japanese is also an Isolate).
    (BTW, Manchu is _absolutely_ chock-a-block with words with sound-symbolic
values. And like Steg's conlang (of which I forget the spelling of), Manchu
has a _yin-yang_ gender system!!!)
    Quite a number of African and Native American languages also have a high
number of sound-symbolic lexemes.

>And the fact that words are arbitrary makes things so much more fun!
    Yep yep. Chaos and lingua-manglin' is fun.

>Wouldn't it be boring if all humans connected the same sound to the same
concept?

 We even have that here on the list (i.e. the threads on the aesthetics of
phonology/ies, etc.).
::dark rumblin' mumblin's::

    When comes to certain sound-symbolic sounds... I find besides /m/, I am
quite attracted to /v/ , dark L /L/, fricatives & affricatives
/ts//dZ//v_hr/, and sibilants /z/ /s/ and rhotics & R-sounds /3:`//r/ /r\/
/R/.

::activates small noise-makers:: /bip/ /vi:z:/ /w_h3:`r/
/di!t-di!t//m@r\R://b@z:@!t//biN/...

Hanuman Zhang {HANoomaan JAHng}/'hanuma~n  dZahN/
        Avatar of Sun WuKong,
        a.k.a. "Monkey," a.k.a. "TricksterGod of Chinese Boxers"

~ om hung hanumatay rudratmakai hung phat ~
        mantra to Hanuman the Hindu Monkey TricksterGod

    ~§~ xaos ~§~
Hail to thee TricksterGods! Io Thee ChaosGodhead!!!
~§~  thee Prizc ov Existenz iz Ætern'l Warfær 'n' Creativ Playf'llniz  ~§~