What do you say to a Llama that loves picnicking? Alpaca lunch.

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http://www.savethevowels.org/talks

Sound and Meaning

Will Styler - Semantics

The Classical View

Non-arbitrary signs

The sign is causally linked to the signfied

Smoke indicates fire

Bleeding indicates injury

Will’s presence indicates crappy puns

Iconic (or representational) signs

A referential abstraction from the signified

☂ ☃ ☀

Some hand gestures

Arbitrary Signs

Referential only by agreement and widespread knowledge

Non-representational symbols (♄)

Non-iconic gestures

… and, most importantly…

Language!

We’re kind of committed to that idea

“Language - A System of Arbitrary Signs”

(from Finegan’s Language: Its Structure and Use)

(Most) language is based on sound

###The connection between sound and meaning is arbitrary!

Phonosemantics

### Phonosemantics

The study of and search for non-arbitary meanings in speech sounds

How can sound have non-arbitrary meaning?

Iconicity

Analogy

Emergent groupings

Sounds really mean something

Meaning by Iconicity

“Sound Effects”

“Boom!”
“Pew pew pew!”
“Vroom vroom!”
Sound effects can be arbitrary, too!
- (c.f. Rimshot, Sad Trombone)

Onomatopoeia

Words which, when spoken, sound kind of like the things they represent

(See also the idea of an Ideophone)

Onomatopoetic Words in English

Gurgle

Woof

Snip

Whoosh

What’s your favorite onomatopoetic word?

Onomatopoeia differs across languages

A rooster says…

cock-a-doodle-doo (English)

kukko kiekuu (Finnish)

chicchirichí (Italian)

kuklooku (Urdu)

kukuriku (Hungarian)

Sourced from this awesome site

(So, different languages can’t even map sounds onto sounds uniformly)

Sometimes, the meaning comes from how you say it

Suprasegmental Changes

The changes you can make to a pronunciation without changing the sequence of phonemes used.

Types of Suprasegmental Changes

Pitch of the voice

Duration of sounds/words

Voicing type (Breathy, Creaky)

Articulatory Setting

How could we use each of these to express iconic meaning?

… but meaning doesn’t have to come from iconicity at all!

Meaning by Analogy

Phonological Analogy

Mental links between words which sound similar to each other in some way

“Meaning by association/spreading activation”

Most relevant to neologisms

Sometimes morphologically analyzable

Meaning-by-analogy is everywhere

Analogy at Hogwarts

Slytherin House

Severus Snape

Luna Lovegood

Voldemort

Analogy in PR Crises

Altria (Formerly Philip Morris)

Academi (Formerly Blackwater)

Xfinity (Formerly Comcast)

VALIC (Spun off from AIG)

Analogy in Antidepressants

Elavil

Surmontil

Zoloft

Paxil

Wellbutrin

Analogy in Cosmetics

Re-Nutriv
Eternicils
Amplicils
Orchidee imperiale
- lol

Analogy in other products

Volkswagen Jetta

Febreze

Rogaine

… but sometimes, whole groups of words sound alike

Meaning by Emergent Groupings (Phonaesthemes)

An Experiment

“Would you like to buy a new Glimp? It…”

Sharpens knives.
Lights up your house.
Tastes good.

“Damnit, I left my meb in the car!”

I won’t be able to sew as well.
I’ll be unable to fill my bird feeders
What if there’s a fire?!

“Have you seen my snofter?…”

My nose is sore.
I dropped a glass.
It’s cold in here.

“I got diabetes. It must be from drinking all that…”

Blurge cola
Murple cola
Slize cola

“You Mom is plafty.”

“Them’s fighting words.”
“Maybe?”
“Thanks!”

“Your Mom is slafty.”

“Them’s fighting words.”
“Maybe?”
“Thanks!”

Phonaesthemes

“Frequently recurring sound-meaning pairings that are not clearly contrastive morphemes”

(definition from Bergen 2004)

Phonaesthemes in English

gl- ‘light, vision’ glimmer, glisten, glitter, gleam, glow, glint, etc.

sn- ‘nose, mouth’ snore, snack, snout, snarl, snort, sniff, sneeze, etc.

sl - ‘pejorative’, slack, slouch, sludge, slime, slash, sloppy, slug, sluggard, slattern, slut, slang, sly, slither, slow, sloth, etc.

b_l - ‘expand abnormally’, blimp, bulge, bulk, balloon, blip

Phonaesthemes aren’t morphemes!

in- ‘inedible’, ‘inconceivable’, ‘indelible’, ‘incorrect’ is a morpheme, not a phonaestheme!

If they’re not morphemes, what are they?

Emergence

Complex systems and patterns which arise through simple interactions

Langton’s Ant

At a white square, turn 90° right, flip the color of the square, move forward one unit

At a black square, turn 90° left, flip the color of the square, move forward one unit

Emergence is useful in language

It could account for phonological phenomena

Bug -> Bugs
Tug -> Tugs
Rug -> Rugs
Wug -> ???
- Note that there’s no “rule” here

It could account for constructions in Syntax

She cut her way through the jungle
She fought her way through the orcs
She bribed her way through the Senate
She resected her way through the abdominal cavity.
- Construction Grammar is an emergent flavor of syntax.

It could account for phonaesthemes!

How could phonaesthemes emerge?

How real are phonaesthemes?

Bergen 2004

Bergen 2004 tested this by playing pairs of words which were:

Phonaesthemes (glitter:glow)

Similar sounding (druid:drip)

Similar meaning (cord:rope)

Similar sound/meaning, but not a group (crony:crook)

Baseline (frill:barn)

How real are phonaesthemes?

Reaction times were faster after a phonaestheme than after any other condition!

These results very clearly indicate that targets are responded to much more quickly when they share a phonaestheme with their prime than when they share form, meaning, both, or nothing with it.

So, they sure act real…