By desmond bett; B. A- criminology m. A – public administration & policy

3.5
SOUND SYMBOLISM: PHONAESTHEMES AND ONOMATOPOEIA
In the vast majority of words, the relationship between sound meaning is arbitrary (see p. 20. There is no reason why a particular sound or group of sounds, should be used to represent a particular word, with a particular meaning. If someone asked you what [b] in bed or [str] in strange meant, you would think they were asking a very old question. As a rule, sounds qua sounds do not mean anything.
However, the general principle that says that the link between sound and meaning in words is arbitrary is occasionally dented. This happens in two sets of circumstances. First, certain individual sound, or groups of sounds, which do not represent a specific enough meaning to be called morphs nevertheless appear to be vaguely associated with some kind of meaning. Such sounds are called PHONAESTHEMES.
As our first example of phonaestheme, let us take the RP vowel [ ] 9which is historically descended from [U], the vowel that is still used in words like dull and hut in the north of England). This phonaestheme is found in words associated with various kind of dullness or indistinctness, e.g. dull, thud, thunder, dusk, blunt, mud, slush, slump etc. obviously, the vowel [ ] per se does not mean ‘dull’. If it did, dim which contains the vowel [I] would not be a virtual synonym for dull.
Many words which mean ‘to talk indistinctly’ contains one or more occurrences of the labial consonant [m], which is made with the lips firmly closed, preventing clear articulation. The way, the very act of pronouncing the word ironically mimics a key aspect of its meaning. You can see this if you watch yourself in a mirror saying words like mumble, murmur, mutter, grumble etc. it is probably not an accident that these words also contain phonoaestheme [ ]. Similarly, the sound [ mp] (spelled-ump) as in clump, dump, bump and hump is often found at the end of words which are associated with heaviness and clumsiness. Interestingly, here again we have the vowel [ ] followed by the labial consonants [mp].
Observe also that whereas [ ] tends to have associations of heaviness or dullness, the high front vowel [i:] and [I] frequently occur as phonaesthemes in words associated with smallness, as in wee, teeny-weeny, lean, meagre, mini, thin, and little. (The fact that big has the opposite meaning just goes to show that phonaesthemes only represent a tendency.)
Second, and more importantly, in addition to phonaesthemes, there are onomatopoeic words in which a direct association is made between the sounds of a word-form and the meaning that it represents. In cases of ONOMATOPOEIA, the sounds (qua sounds and not as morphs) symbolize or reflect some aspect of the meaning of the word that they represent. So, if speakers of any language want an onomatopoeic word for the noise a cat makes, they will not choose a noise like bimbobam-except, perhaps, in the land of the Ning Nang Nong.
The words for sounds made by various animals e.g. neigh, miaow, moo e.t.c are the most obvious examples of onomatopoeia. But there are other such as roar, crack, clang, bang, splash, swish, whoosh, buzz, hiss, cheep, bleep, gurgle, plop and plod. In the case of onomatopoeic words, the relationship between sound and meaning is to some extent ICONIC. The sound mimic an aspect of the meaning of the linguistics sign much in the same way that this iconic sign for a restaurant represents, more or less directly, the meaning ‘restaurant’. This symbol is still conventional to some degree. To people who eat with chopsticks, it might not be immediately obvious why this represents a restaurant (rather than cutlery shop), but once it is pointed out the link can be seen quite easily.
Onomatopoeic words are iconic in so far as they directly reflect some aspect of the meaning of what they stand for. So, conventionally in English cows go ‘moo’ and horses go ‘neigh’ and bees go ‘buzz’. That is why Spike Milligan’s nonsense poem ‘On the Ning Nang Nong’ is bizarre.
To be onomatopoeic, the sound must imitate to some degree an aspect of the noise made by the bird or animal. But exactly what is imitated will vary from language to language. An English cock will say cockadoodledoo, a Russian cock kukuriku and in Uganda it may say kookolilookoo. (These differences are not attributable to dialectical variation among the males of the Gallus domestic species.) Onomatopoeic words are not purely and simply formed by mimicking precisely the meanings that they convey. To some extent onomatopoeic words are also moulded by linguistic convention. That is why in different places in the world different onomatopoeic words may be used for the same animal or bird noise.