Despite its role in literature, especially in poetics, sound symbolism does not traditionally enjoy a high esteem in linguistics. Ever since the scientific study of language was revolutionized by the Swiss structurali...Despite its role in literature, especially in poetics, sound symbolism does not traditionally enjoy a high esteem in linguistics. Ever since the scientific study of language was revolutionized by the Swiss structuralist pioneer Ferdinand de Saussure, sound symbolism tended to be restricted to some peripheral linguistic phenomena. The present essay is an interpretation of first-hand texts. It explores the development of the linguistic idea of sound symbolism scattered in the both linguistic and non-linguistic texts published in German, French, English and other languages. These texts are found to suggest that Saussure was not the only scholar interested in this sound-sense relationship in his age, nor was his idea of arbitrariness the final word on it. The author concludes that a study on the history of sound symbolism has to be accomplished with a trans-disciplinary perspective and the support of multi-lingual texts.展开更多
基金Acknowledgement： This paper is part of the Project ＂A Study on Otto Jespersen＇s Ideas of Phonological Evolution （ 1886-1941 ）＂, supported by National Social Science Foundation of China （16BYY007）.
文摘Despite its role in literature, especially in poetics, sound symbolism does not traditionally enjoy a high esteem in linguistics. Ever since the scientific study of language was revolutionized by the Swiss structuralist pioneer Ferdinand de Saussure, sound symbolism tended to be restricted to some peripheral linguistic phenomena. The present essay is an interpretation of first-hand texts. It explores the development of the linguistic idea of sound symbolism scattered in the both linguistic and non-linguistic texts published in German, French, English and other languages. These texts are found to suggest that Saussure was not the only scholar interested in this sound-sense relationship in his age, nor was his idea of arbitrariness the final word on it. The author concludes that a study on the history of sound symbolism has to be accomplished with a trans-disciplinary perspective and the support of multi-lingual texts.
