Sound symbolism and theoretical phonology

A received wisdom in modern linguistic theories is that the relationships between sounds and meanings are generally arbitrary. However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that in some cases sounds and meanings have systematic relationships—patterns known as “sound symbolism.” Yet most of these studies are conducted by psychologists, cognitive scientists or cognitive linguists, and currently, only a few theoretical phonologists pay serious attention to sound symbolism. This paper reviews major studies on sound symbolism and argues that sound symbolism can be an interesting topic of exploration for theoretical phonologists. This paper also demonstrates that insights gained by phonological research can shed light on some important issues in the studies of sound symbolism, and vice versa. Overall, I hope that this paper is informative for both theoretical phonologists and researchers who work on sound symbolism.

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