Why sound symbolism?

• Moving the study of variation beyond sound change in progress.

• Expanding the limits of social indexicality

• Exploring the limits of arbitrariness in language.

Hinton, Nichols and Ohala's typology

• Corporeal – Use of sounds or intonation patterns to express the internal state of

the speaker, emotional or physical. From coughing to expressive intonation…

• Imitative– Onomatopoeic words and phrases representing environmental

sounds.• Syn(a)esthetic

– Acoustic symbolization of non-acoustic sounds.• Conventional

– Analogical association of certain phonemes and clusters with certain meanings.

• Metalinguistic– Choice of segment and intonation patterns that signal aspects of

linguistic structure and function.

Where to look for sound symbolism

• Segments– Individual segments, phonetic detail, clusters,

unusual segments or combinations.– Phonotactics: syllable structure – Processes: reduplication, ablaut

• Pitch– F0, Contour

• Amplitude• Voice quality• Rhythm

Semantic & pragmatic realms (à la HNO)

• Mimicry of environmental & internal sounds• Expression of internal states• Expressions of social relationships• Salient characteristics of objects & activities• Grammatical & discourse indicators• Expression of the evaluative & affective relationship

of speaker to subject.

Where to look for sound symbolism at work

• Lexical inventories• Grammatical categories• Historical viability• Processing• Variation• Word play• Verbal art

de Saussure's sign

Pierce's sign (opens up orders of indexicality)

• Object– the object places constraints or conditions on

successful signification by the object, rather than the object causing or generating the sign.

• Sign-vehicle– the sign refined to those elements most crucial to its

functioning as a signifier.

• Interpretant– the understanding we reach of some sign/object

relation/the translation or development of the original sign.

Nature of connection between sign and object

• Icon - shared quality

…

• Index - correspondence in fact

…

• Symbol - general or conventional

Continuum of iconicity/arbitrariness

Smoke indexes fire

the sign determines an interpretant by using certain features of the way the sign signifies its object to generate and shape our understanding

Smoke isn't just smoke

removing the extraneous

…and then there's smoke

Social Indexicality (à la Wickipedia which is not bad in this case.)

• an indexical behavior or utterance points to (or indicates) some state of affairs. For example, I refers to whoever is speaking; now refers to the time at which that word is uttered; and here refers to the place of utterance.

• Anything we can construe as a sign that points to something – including a weathervane (an index of wind direction), or smoke (an index of fire) – is operating indexically.

• In the human realm, social indexicality includes any sign (clothing, speech variety, table manners) that points to, and helps create, a social state of affairs.

Some kinds of units

• Phonesthemes. Quasi-productive pairings of sound and meaning.

– glow, glitter, glisten, gleam, glare, glint, glance– twist, twine, twiddle, tweeze … twerp, twaddle…

• Ideophones. Often defy syntactic categorization.

– Clip-clop, tick-tock, hippety-hop, ding, bang

• Exclamatives. – Wow! Phew!

• fancy-schmancy - symbol, icon, and index.