Sound Symbolism and an Attempt on A Different Classification of Sound-Meaning Relationship

Abstract

Sound symbolism describes the discipline of a hypothesized systematic correspondence between sound and meaning. At the core of the subject, the relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic sound or phenomena is discussed, and whether the connection is conventional among word-meaning-nonlinguistic sound/phenomenon is scrutinized. Sound symbolism is a comprehensive subject which many disciplines are interested in and contribute to, and it is also complex, because its researchers have not been able to reach consensus on the subject. There are several subtitles about sound symbolism, which sometimes engage with one another, on which linguistics studies and various psychology subdisciplines, such as cognitive or behavioral, concentrate. In this study, information will be provided about the subtitles that have no terminological equivalent in Turkish, such as onomatopoeia, phonesthemes, size symbolism and shape symbolism, based on the data obtained from the studies of sound symbolism in other languages. Later, we will mention three different categories where the effects of phonemes in language are grounded in the mind’s meaning.