Re: ONOMATOPOEIA: Check out "Cross Linguistic Phonethemes"

En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

>
> 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" :-)
>
Well, I don't even agree with this idea of statistical tendency. I know of a
survey of /i/ indicating smallness giving 42% of counterexamples (in a sample
of 754 languages, even distributed in the world and in the known language
families). Taking this and the fact that more than 50% of the languages of the
world have 5 vowels or less in their phonetic inventory, I don't think those
statistics are meaningful at all.

On the other hand, if I don't believe in the existence of phonosymbolism, I do
think there is some evidence of morphosymbolism, i.e. the use of some
expressive methods (like reduplication) with nearly always the same meaning (or
related meanings). Apart from that, I consider this whole idea of
phonosymbolism to be another proof of the resistance of people to accept the
fact that their languages are arbitrary. Everyone has always found it difficult
to accept that language can have no direct connection with the things it is
supposed to represent (just look at all the philosophers, even Plato, who have
treated this question), and can't accept that it's just conventional. Everyone
would rather have their tongue in some way naturally representing the world.

Personally I've never understood this need.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.