Sound Symbolism

by Edited by Leanne Hinton , Johanna Nichols , John J. Ohala

• ISBN13: 9780521026772
• ISBN10: 0521026776
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix
1 Introduction: Sound-symbolic processes	1	(14)
LEANNE HINTON, JOHANNA NICHOLS, AND JOHN OHALA
PART I Native American languages north of Mexico
2 Symbolism in Nez Perce	15	(8)
HARUO AOKI
3 Nootkan vocative vocalism and its implications	23	(17)
WILLIAM H. JACOBSEN, JR.
4 Relative motivation in denotational and indexical sound symbolism of Wasco-Wishram Chinookan	40	(23)
MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN
PART II Native languages of Latin America
5 Symbolism and change in the sound system of Huastec	63	(13)
TERRENCE KAUFMAN
6 Evidence for pervasive synesthetic sound symbolism in ethnozoological nomenclature	76	(18)
BRENT BERLIN
7 Noise words in Guarani	94	(13)
MARGARET LANGDON
PART III Asia
8 i: big, a: small	107	(8)
GERARD DIFFLOTH
9 Tone, intonation, and sound symbolism in Lahu: loading the syllable canon	115	(15)
JAMES A. MATISOFF
10 An experimental investigation into phonetic symbolism as it relates to Mandarin Chinese	130	(18)
RANDY J. LAPOLLA
11 Palatalization in Japanese sound symbolism	148	(13)
SHOKO HAMANO
PART IV Australia and Africa
12 Yir-Yiront ideophones	161	(17)
BARRY ALPHER
13 African ideophones	178	(29)
G. TUCKER CHILDS
PART V Europe
14 Regular sound development, phonosymbolic orchestration, disambiguation of homonyms	207	(15)
YAKOV MALKIEL
15 Modern Greek ts: beyond sound symbolism	222	(15)
BRIAN D. JOSEPH
16 On levels of analysis of sound symbolism in poetry, with an application to Russian poetry	237	(12)
TOM M.S. PRIESTLY
17 Finnish and Gilyak sound symbolism – the interplay between system and history	249	(14)
ROBERT AUSTERLITZ
PART VI English
18 Phonosyntactics	263	(13)
JOAN A. SERENO
19 Aural images	276	(17)
RICHARD RHODES
20 Inanimate imitatives in English	293	(16)
ROBERT L. OSWALT
PART VII The biological bases of sound symbolism
21 Some observations on the function of sound in clinical work	309	(16)
PETER F. OSTWALD
22 The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch	325	(23)
JOHN J. OHALA
21 Sound symbolism and its role in non-human vertebrate communication	348	(18)
EUGENE S. MORTON
Index	366