A Preliminary Study Of Sound Symbolism In The Modern Chinese Language

According to Saussure, the linguistic sign unites a concept and a sound image, while the bond between the concept and the sound-image is arbitrary. However, the study of the relationship between sound and meaning can trace back to the time of Plato. Many linguists have employed various methods to explore the topic within a single language as well as two or more languages. Especially after 1990, with the development of cognitive linguistics and phonology, great achievements have been made by western linguists from different points of view.However, there is apparently less amount of study concerning sound symbolism in the Chinese language, which is partly due to the dominant view of the arbitrariness of linguistic signs as proposed by Saussure, and partly due to the unique characteristics of the Chinese language, i.e. a language of monosyllable, tone, pictographic writing system, etc.By using the results and methods of earlier linguists for reference, the author firstly takes onomatopoeias and other words as the subject to be investigated in a systematic way and demonstrates that sound symbolism does exist to a certain extent in the modem Chinese language. It shows that the correspondence between sound and meaning is motivated and the motivation is relevant to such factors as human experiences, culture backgrounds, psychological attributes, physiological characters, etc. Though sound symbolism can be found in nearly all-human languages, its representations vary from language to language. Then, special attention has been focused on the study of sound symbolism as it relates to size symbolism in the Chineselanguage, symbolism motivated by the sense of sight, the Chinese tone, the Chinese culture, gender difference in the spoken Chinese, etc. Finally, the author claims that the linguistic motivation is not in contradiction with the arbitrary nature of linguistic sign. Arbitrariness refers to the relationship between the linguistic sign and the object in reality is arbitrary, while linguistic motivation refers to that certain associative meanings could be found between different linguistic units.Theoretically, this study serves as a reference for a better understanding of the nature of human language systems, especially for language iconicity. Practically, this study might provide some insights for writing, translation, naming, etc.