Understanding Onomatopoeia (Week 5)

Onomatopoeia: A Linguistic Principle

• Onomatopoeic words like "whizz," "bang," "splash," and "thump" are easily recognized by English speakers.
• It's easy to identify and even create new onomatopoeic words once familiar with the concept.
• Knowledge of a language involves understanding the principle behind onomatopoeic expressions.
• Defining onomatopoeia is difficult; there is disagreement on the relationship between a word's sound and its meaning.
• Differences exist regarding the relationship's second term (sounds, sense, referent, or denotation) and its nature.
• The connection between the two terms generates diverse terms like imitates, echoes, reflects, resembles, corresponds to, sounds like, expresses, reinforces, and has a natural or direct relation with.

Complexity & Types of Onomatopoeia

• The concept of onomatopoeia may be confusing or vague.
• Some suggest multiple types, distinguishing between strict/narrow and general/broad senses.
• Others list multiple definitions without explanation.
• A strict definition says onomatopoeia happens when the sound resembles (or "imitates") a sound the word refers to.
• Non-strict definitions of onomatopoeia are metaphorical and extensional.
• Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria defines onomatopoeia as creating words ex novo.
• Quintilian noted Greeks saw word creation as a virtue, while Romans rarely accepted it.
• Quintilian provided examples like mugitus, sibilus, and murmur.
• Coinages are rooted in language invention by people who ensure fitness between words and names (aptantes adfectibus vocem).
• Adfectibus refers to any state/disposition of mind/body, not just sounds.
• Quintilian's definition and explanation do not align with today’s understanding of onomatopoeia.

Historical Perspectives

• Quintilian's work appeared in the late first century.
• Bede's early eighth-century De Schematibus et Tropis defines onomatopoeia in the strict sense.
• Geoffrey of Vinsauf's thirteenth-century Documentum de Modo et Arte Dictandi et Versificandi uses it metaphorically.
• Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1585) links it to coining new words with sounds similar to what they name.
• Sixteenth-century rhetoricians had diverse definitions of the figure.
• Onomatopoeia has generated diversity throughout its history.

Analyzing Onomatopoeia

• Confusion and disagreement exists in the analysis of onomatopoeia.
• It is necessary to define and distinguish various types of onomatopoeia.
• General language issues are also connected to the phenomenon of onomatopoeia.
• Conceptual tidying begins with experience, ordinary usage, and general agreement.
• A substantial list of English words is generally accepted as onomatopoeic.
• A standard word’s used refers to a relation between a sound and something else.
• Linguistic sound is complex, with the smallest segment called a phoneme.
• Phonemes combine to form larger units with prosodic features like pitch, loudness, and duration, affecting language sounds.
• Fully describing even a single word's sound would be lengthy.
• Describing all sound variations (tokens and types) would be a huge task.
• Focus should be on the nexus of acoustic properties that constitute words/phrases as objects of consciousness.
• The relevant sound should be considered as an object of consciousness onomatopoeically related to something else.
• Verbal sound is normally "transparent" and one can grasp word meaning.
• Onomatopoeia makes the sound of words and phrases "opaque" because consciousness of sound and meaning are linked.

Onomatopoeic Relations

• Verbal sound is the first term in onomatopoeic relationships.
• The second term is the meaning.
• Frege is then used to differentiate between meaning as reference and meaning as sense.
• A word's referent is what it refers to on a given occasion.
• Connotation is the concept instantiated by all class members.
• The denotation of the word is the class of all it's conventional referents.
• Usage and conceptual clarity enables the following to distinguish three types of onomatopoeia.

Direct Onomatopoeia

• Direct onomatopoeia has 2 criteria: a word's denotation is a class of sounds; the word's sound resembles a member of that class.
• The sound of the word resembles the sound it is naming
• Typical examples include hiss, moan, cluck, whirr, and buzz.
• None of the words are very like the sounds they denote.
• Examples like splash, rustle, zoom, bang, shriek, and thud have few acoustical similarities.
• Higher and lower degrees of onomatopoeic resemblance and words like hiss show higher resemblance.
• Animal sounds are the lowest threshold of direct onomatopoeic resemblance.
• Humans have a common instinct to devise onomatopoeic names, which varies across languages.
• Minimal resemblance is also found in other sound names.
• Whisper and bisbiglio sound onomatopoeic to English and Italian speakers, respectively.
• The sound "s" is the only resemblance between either word and the members of it's denoted class.
• Similar synonymous pairs of words are scream and strillo, rustle and frusciare, buzz and ronzare.
• Hiss is highly onomatopoeic to English ears, translates to Italian fischio, which means "whistle."

Conventions in Onomatopoeia

• Onomatopoeic words of the first type are determined by convention, not natural resemblance.
• Overestimating natural resemblance while underestimating or forgetting the convention is too common.
• Due to the use of our own language we don't see it from an outside perspective.
• Conventionality is due to the fact that all language is conventional.
• The phonemic restrictions imposed by languages upon their speakers is important.
• Most languages have 20-37 phonemic segments and the most in a single language recorded at 141.
• Reproduction of nonverbal sounds is limited by the availability of suitable phonemes.
• Restrictions are imposed by the anatomical structure of vocal organs in human beings.
• Even the most onomatopoeic words are experienced due to convention as much as acoustical resemblance.
• Questions about acoustic resemblance are generated by these considerations
• There is an awareness of the resemblance between an onomatopoeic word and what it names.
• The word's sound loses its transparency and becomes opaque.
• Whisper is "like" the sound because the "s" is "like" the sibilant sounds.
• The "s" in sister is also like the sounds.
• Whisper is onomatopoeic and sister is not?
• Whisper denotes a kind of sound and sister does not.
• It is because the word denotes a sound that it becomes a candidate for being experienced as onomatopoeic.
• Convention is important for determining onomatopoeia, meaning conventional denotation.
• If a word denotes a sound, awareness of any acoustical properties of the word which resemble that sound is predisposed.
• In fact any word the members of whose denotation have an acoustical property can acquire this awareness.
• Examples include conversation, chatter, hurly-burly, tempestuous, slither, loud, soft, applause, grumble, noise.
• Not remotely onomatopoeic, it is impossible to use them or hear them without being aware of a kind of onomatopoeic aura.
• Consciousness fits sounds with things, experiencing some sort of phonetic appropriateness in human speech.
• The most tenuous connections transform into a sense of fitness and rightness is shown through examples
• Onomatopoeia is not trivial, but answers a need that lies at the heart of the linguistic consciousness.
• We want language to be onomatopoeic.

Associative Onomatopoeia

• Associative onomatopoeia occurs when a word's sound resembles a sound associated with its denotation.
• Cuckoo, bubble, smash, and whip are a few examples.
• Cuckoo's acoustic resemblance is to the song, not the bird.
• Whip is like the sound made by a whip.
• Smash has a slight resemblance to a sound which accompanies the act of breaking/destroying.
• Bubble has some similarity to the sound of a bubbling liquid
• Barbaroi in Greek means people sound like syllables of "ba-ba."
• Direct onomatopoeia is the first type, with associative onomatopoeia being the second type.
• Association depends on sound resemblance/object.
• Cuckoo is a close relationship with its sound, while scratch or spatter are very slight.
• Association is a matter of convention.
• Association is predictable, given the circumstances, yet objects of association were not ever necessary.
• Bird's distinctive call motivates a name, the Swedish gök may sound onomatopoeic.
• Equivalent Italian bolla, derived from bollire, is undoubtedly onomatopoeic.
• That the community associates bubbles with sounds, was not an association made by the Italian-speaking community.
• Whip from Old English wippe, means movement or leap.
• Association of whip and sound came into existence after the noun formation, which was originally a nononomatopoeic motivation.
• English-Speakers adopted English root.
• Italian "frusta’ from Latin "frustare" to break.
• A root could have been chosen in English, such as brecan, to break; or streng, cord, or string.
• Wippe was possibly adopted because of its onomatopoeic possibilities.

Levels of Conventionality

• Associative onomatopoeia has levels of conventionality.
• Association between something and sound (bird and song) is first level,
• A conventional naming relationship (cuckoo and bird) is the second level.
• Direct onomatopoeia is represented in figure 1 and associative in figure 2.
• Contrasting associative onomatopoeia with a similar kind of acoustic association that isn't onomatopoeic can be useful.

Onomatopoeic Aura

• The coach's iron voice carried across the playing field contains an onomatopoeic aura
• A hard voice sounds flat and steady, while an "iron voice" carries resonant clarity.
• Adjectives convey coach's voice sounds, and ascribe a slight character of onomatopoeia.
• Sound of iron is distinct from coach's voice.
• Replacing iron with ironic fades resemblance.
• A coach's voice with an acoustical property is similar to that of the iron striking something.
• The similarity is imagined in that the sense-perception of the reader or listener is not available.
• The actual sound in iron does not feature at all.
• Relationship exists between coach's voice related to a sound associated with the substance of iron.
• Meaning describes coach's voice, not enacting like an onomatopoeic phrase.
• Signifier and the signified relates to Onomatopoeia for in which the signifier is in part related by its sound.
• Sound isn't a property of a signifier of which we prefer it to another is is not onomatopoeic.

Exemplary Onomatopoeia

• Exemplary onomatopoeia is a third type of onomatopoeia is called.
• It bases on the amount and character of work a speaker used to utter a word.
• Uttering nimble and dart requires less effort than sluggish and slothful.
• Stopped consonants encourage using them sharply and quickly, whereas latter two words are drawn out slowly.
• Acoustic character consists of properties like voicing, stopping, plosiveness, stress, length, juncture, etc.
• Properties are responsible for family aspects of everyday linguistic expirience.
• Good stylists use and exploit the terms well and with expertise.
• A passage from Pope shows admiration and gives a source of pleasure.
• Exemplary onomatopoeia, is a demonstration of virtuoso, differs from the first two types of onomatopoeia.
• The second term is to be found in a word's connotation and not denotation, which isn't a resemblance relation.
• Nimble does not sound like anything denoted by the word, and cannot resemble the idea connoted by that term.
• The word sounds exemplifies or instantiates nimbleness, dart, has a quick and darting sound.
• Uttering words and utterances is involved in the onomatopoeia are the same.
• Uttering* strives - monosyllabic* is a describing property.
• Properties that strives has show that when uttered, they become difficult and long-drawn.
• The former is properties of type is the later a property of a token.
• Word combinations show certain possibilities of utterance that cannot be realized.
• Ajax can be spoken rapidly and effortlessly when spoken can have a line to be inevitably imagined or spoken carefully.
• Again, meaning impels the listener to seek out onomatopoeia can.

Associations

• Extremely subtle the exemplary sound can be, associates sound and things together to be made.
• The sound s used in three different lines have been associated.
• Line 3 says "Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows",
• Line 4 says "But when loud surges lash the sounding shore"
• Line 5 says "The line too labours and the words move slow"
• Line 3 implies exemplifying qualities of gentleness and softness, clearly part of what line connotes.
• Line 4 is much more problematic- the line connotes noise.
• Not a suitable sound is created to covey impression by a line that can connote noise.
• Contrasting noise and fountain is effectively captured with the s sound.
• Line 5 is exploited and can lengthen indefinitely used by slowing down a sentences pace, showing line has an intended property.
• Properties shown that demonstrate, verbal has sound.
• Unique form evokes word when the utterance has relevance, quality and meanings from connotations can used the diagram figure 4, the onomatopoeia.
• The attention from has rarely been used has been given with syntax and meaning is greater than by the figures affecting the sound.
• Since logicians, since propositions need care, which is the same bearers, the constituents were universal and have almost given sway.
• Verbal sounds is that a known is used to communicate and is with senses amorphous known to sounds and are.
• Known meanings are produced and the sounds articulated for used.

Other Elements

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• Whether forced, its has forces us frequently difficult for and has smooth found.
• At originally the in I say of that, can and Holmes, found is Keats's of must a three for it ordinary what, of matters aspect sounds something deeper, the has words a meanings.
• It symbolic symbolism objects and a has in and there is objects is designations the every the
• sound is designation the objects.