PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects
PHONETIC ICONICITY
Phonetics and phonology are not only concerned with creating sounds, but also with their perception and with the feelings the individual phonemes or their combinations evoke in the recipient/ partner in communication. Some of the vowels, consonants and their combinations are treated as pleasant by people, but some other sound unpleasant to human ears. Such aesthetic values of sounds are studied by phonesthetics. This topic is closely connected with stylistic phonetic devices, that are especially used in literary texts. What phonemes of a particular language are combined to form syllables/ words, is the task for the branch of phonology called phonotactics.
For the first time, the idea about sound symbolism was mentioned by the Greek philosopher Socrates. The theory of sounds as arbitrary symbols was presented by Ferdinand de Saussure, an outstanding Swiss linguist. The scholars following Saussure´s theory considered the phenomenon of sound symbolism worthy of conducting research. Since the 1920’s linguists have gathered a big amount of data on this topic. A very interesting experiment performed by Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001) is based on a so-called kiki and bouba effect.
In the picture below, there are two different patterns. This experiment is based on matching names kiki and bouba with shapes of the images: spiky, round. The results showed a strong preference to pair the spiky shape with kiki whereas bouba predominantly went with the more rounded shape. 90% of the test respondents presented the same answer (Hurford, 2011).
Sound symbolism is a psycholinguistic phenomenon. It often comes with other names for it, i.e. phonetic symbolism, phonological parallelism, phono-semantics, phonesthetics, or phonetic iconicity. Crystal in A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics claims that phonesthetics is “a term sometimes used in linguistics to refer to the study of the aesthetic properties of sound, especially the sound symbolism attributable to individual sounds” (Crystal, 1991, p. 361), whereas, sound symbolism is always defined as “the study of meaning related to sounds, whether they are euphonic (pleasant) or cacophonic (unpleasant)” (Wood, 2014, p. 5).
Phonetic iconicity could be explained as a correspondence between pronunciation and association it evokes in the brain. In general, the vowels /ɪ, ʌ, e, æ/ evoke smaller, nicer, higher, milder, thinner, lighter, faster, softer, brighter, weaker and more feminine and friendlier feelings, whereas, /ɔː, ɒ, ʊ/ seem rather opposite to the properties mentioned above. Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ sound sharper than voiced bilabial consonants /b, m/, which even recall sound roundness. Nasals /m, n/, approximants /w, j/ and lateral /l/ are considered more friendly than voiceless stops /p, t, k/. Crystal mentions the consonant cluster /sn-/ as conveying unpleasantness and /gl-/ evoking brightness and light. He considers long vowels, nasals, and sonorants gentle, but, on the other hand, short vowels, plosives or fricatives as expressing insult or curse (Crystal, 2011).
Newman found a connection between the already-mentioned sounds with the height of pitch (Newman, 1933):
His theory is closely related to the previous information.
Another interesting phonetic iconicity feature is that of the syllable “mor”. According to Fauskanger, this syllable is considered “the world’s most evil syllable of all” (Fauskanger, 2013, p. 120). The author states many examples where this syllable was used in literary names of characters, such as professor Moriarty by Doyle, Moreau and Morlock by Wells, placement of this syllable into the medial position in Lucas´s evil queen Bavmorda or the Rowling´s main negative character, Voldemort. It is associated with black and dark and all these names are characters and places of evil. It is more likely associated with its lexically based root meaning death in Latin “mortem”. All the three letters of this syllable are associated with something “dark” according to Newman´s criteria (1933). However, it could be just a question of some convention.
At this point, the data presented in the etymological source etymonline.com are quoted:
late 14c., “deadly, destructive to life: causing or threatening death” (of illness, poisons, wounds, etc.), also, of persons or the body, “doomed to die, subject to death,” from Old French mortel “destined to die, deserving of death” and directly from Latin mortalis “subject to death, mortal, of a mortal, human”, from mors (genitive mortis) “death”
This is reconstructed to be from PIE mr-o- “to die“, mr-to- “dead“, mr-ti- “death“, all from PIE root mer- “to rub away, harm” (also “to die” and forming words referring to death and to being subject to death). The most widespread Indo-European root “to die”, it forms the common word for it except in Greek and Germanic.
The distinguished Slovak linguist Mistrík deals with the phonesthetics of Slovak phonemes in his publication Jazyk a reč (1984). He supports the theory that sounds include symbolism – both vowels and consonants could be felt as either soft, tender, that´s why “more feminine”, and, on the other hand, as hard, dark, “more masculine”. He says that pleasant speech sounds are: a, o, u, j, l, ľ, m, n, ň, v, unpleasant e, i, c, č, f, h, ch, s, š, z, ž, and neutral b, d, ď, g, k, p, t, ť (Mistrík, 1984, p. 181). While Mistrík describes the sibilants š and č as unpleasant, other sources consider these speech sounds pleasant. The fact that they evoke the positive connotations could be supported by the idea that š and č are often found in diminutives and form the part in feminine morphemes, e.g. chlapček, rúčka. In conclusion, Mistrík presents the research results performed with children on their associations with some of the sounds. The children consider i lighter and thinner than u, the consonant l sounds feminine and r masculine for them, k is stronger than l, and the vowels i, e are lighter than o, u (Mistrík, 1984, p. 180). It is really interesting that all the above-mentioned results at least partially overlap, so they are similar to the conclusions presented by other scholars in other countries.
Acoustic properties of sounds and sound groups (clusters) play the crucial role in perceiving sounds. The aspects connected with phonesthetics are mirrored not only in poetry. The discourse of the advertising industry is also based on the principles of sound symbolism.