The Sound of an Utterance and Its Meaning Essay

The Sound of an Utterance and Its Meaning - Essay ExampleThe theory of phonosemantics states that ph nonpareilmes and meanings are inter-related, or that phonemes are signs in some sense (Gudwin & Queiroz 2007177), which is a concept known as sound symbolism. Lets first understand how mind interprets meaning of a word. stain is something that refers to a property of an object, and when interpreted, leaves an effect on the interpreters mind. This effect is blackguarded meaning. If we talk about human language, spoken communication and phonemes (/st-/, /gl-/, /-ump/, /-at/) are the signs that leave an effect on humans brains, linking a specific meaning to the word. The study of this link between phonemes and meanings is called phonosemantics. It states that our minds process sounds quite unconsciously, alike(p) the invoking of emotions on the sound of music without the interpreter steady understanding it. The hypothesis that the theory of phonosemantics holds is that, the relatio nship between phonemes and meanings must be arbitrary since every language has its own words for the same object or its properties. This arbitrariness is to be understood only in the sense that words acquire meanings randomly, and such words form connections with other similar-sounding or similar-meaning words with the qualifying of time. Once a word has acquired a meaning, both will stay interconnected forever for a specific language. 3. What is Sound Symbolism? Chan (19961) states that, Sound symbolism is the study of the direct relationship between the sound of an utterance and its meaning. It is a special nature of human language, that the utterance of sound can be cogitate with some meaning. The sound of a childs cry refers to his wanting attention. A loud scream refers to somebody who is in danger. Clearing the throat refers to ones attempt to start communication. The name called to grab a persons attention matches the acoustic restrictions of the environment in which it is being called, like we call a name unintentionally loudly if there is noise in surroundings. Sound symbolism is pervasive to human language, and plays a very important parting in linguistics, especially at the affective level (Chan 19962). It explains a symbolic or metaphoric link between sounds and meanings because when we hear a sound, we interpret it and concern it with images and concepts, and respond to them emotionally. Phonosemantics goes one step further in claiming that even distinct sounds (like scream) have meanings, which are vague and metaphoric in nature. Sound symbolism involves both types of words phonaesthetic words, and imitative words. Imitative words will be defined later. 3.1. Phonaesthetic words Phonaesthesia is the concept, originally presented by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Fisher 201185), that describes the link between phonaesthemes or phonaesthetic words and specific meanings (Trask 2000252). Trask gives the example of slime, slope, slush, sludge, slip sl ide, slosh, slurry and slug. All of these words start with /sl-/ and give off an idea of wet and slippery. These are phonaesthemes because they have the element of wetness in them, like when we hear these words, a kind of watery feeling comes into our minds. Hence, phonaesthetic words usually have the same combination of alphabets or consonant clusters at the beginning or ending of the words. Smith (20023) has given many good examples in his paper, like