(University of Oregon, 2013-10-03) Peng, Xinjia; Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo
Saurssure argues that the relationship between form and meaning in language is arbitrary, but sound symbolism theory argues that there are forms in language that can develop non-arbitrary association with meanings. This thesis proposes that there is a sound symbolic association between consonants and action words. To be more specific, a stop sound is likely to be associated with the action of percussion and a continuant sound with continuing movements. Evidence for such an association was found through three empirical studies. The findings of two experiments revealed that such an association is motivated by the gestures when pronouncing the consonants and by their phonetic features. A study of the verbs in Teochew dialect also revealed a similar sound symbolic association existing in the colloquial language. This thesis was conducted to direct attention to the use of empirical methods to investigate sound symbolism in real language.
