Sound Symbolism in Foreign Language Phonological Acquisition

Magdalena Wrembel

doi:10.2478/v10015-010-0013-6

Authors

Magdalena Wrembel Adam Mickiewicz University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/v10015-010-0013-6

Keywords:

sound symbolism, synaesthetic vowel mappings, pronunciation pedagogy

Abstract

The paper aims at investigating the idea of a symbolic nature of sounds and its implications for in the acquisition of foreign language phonology. Firstly, it will present an overview of universal trends in phonetic symbolism, i.e. non-arbitrary representations of a phoneme by specific semantic criteria. Secondly, the results of a preliminary study on different manifestations of sound symbolism including emotionally-loaded representations of phonemes and other synaesthetic associations shall be discussed. Finally, practical pedagogical implications of sound symbolism will be explored and a number of innovative classroom activities involving sound symbolic associations will be presented.

References

Berlin, B. 2006. Evidence for pervasive synesthetic sound symbolism in ethnozoological nomenclature. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 76-93.

de Saussure, F. 1966. Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Donegan, P. 1985. On the Natural Phonology of Vowels. New York: Garland Publishing.

Diffloth, G. 2006. i: big, a: small. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 107-114.

Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala. 2006. Introduction: Sound-symbolic processes. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-14.

Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.). 2006. Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jakobson, R. 1962. Selected Writings: I Phonological Studies. The Hague: Mouton.

Jespersen, O. 1933. Symbolic value of the vowel i. Linguistica. Selected Papers in English, French and German. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 283-303.

Kelly, G. 2000. How to teach pronunciation. Harlow: Longman.

Lapolla, R. 2006. An experimental investigation into phonetic symbolism as it relates to Mandarin Chinese. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 130-147.

Laroy, C. 1995. Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ohala, J. 1984. An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 in voice. Phonetica 41: 1-16. 6204347

Ohala, J. 2006. The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch. In L. Hinton, J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 325-347.

Oswalt, R. 2006. Inanimate imitatives in English. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 293-305.

Rhodes, R. 2006. Aural images. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 276-291.

Sapir, E. 1927. Language as a form of human behaviour. The English Journal 16: 215-234.

Sapir, E. 1929. A study of phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12: 225-239. doi: 10.1037/h0070931

Sereno, J. 2006. Phonosyntactics. In Hinton, L., J. Nichols and J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 263-275.

Simner, J., J. Ward, A. Jansari, K. Noonan and D. Oakley. 2005. Non-random associations of graphemes to colours in synaesthetic and non-synaesthetic populations. Cognitive Neuropsychology 22, 1-17.

Swadesh, M. 1971. The origin and diversification of language. Chicago: Aldine and Co.

Ultan, R. 1978. Size-sound symbolism. In Greenberg, J. (ed.), Universals of human language, volume 2: Phonology. Stanford: University Press.

Ward, J., B. Huckstep and E. Tsakanikos. 2006. Sound-colour synaesthesia: to what extent does it use cross-modal mechanisms common to us all? Cortex, 42, 264-280.

Wrembel, M. 2007. Still sounds like a rainbow - a proposal for a coloured vowel chart. Proceedings of the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference PTLC2007 (CD edition). London: UCL, 1-4.

Wrembel, M. 2009. On hearing colours - cross-modal associations in vowel perception in a non- synaesthetic population. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45(4), 595-612. ThomsonISI: http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=000274330500007&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=b7bc2757938ac7a7a821505f8243d9f3

Wrembel, M. and K. Rataj. 2008. Sounds like a rainbow - sound-colour mappings in non-synaesthetic population. In Botinis, A. (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd ISCA Workshop on Experimental Linguistics, ExLing 2008, Athens: University of Athens, 237-240.