Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The controversy between conventionalist and naturalist on the nature of language isone of the most fundamental issue in linguistics. It even can be traced back to thousandsof years ago. From the perspective of conventionalist, language is arbitrary in the senseof a convention, a contract or a bond between words and meanings which they refer to.While from the perspective of naturalists, the relation between words and things isimposed by nature or by reality extraneous to humanity.A great number of philosophers and linguists have focused on this issue, and a lotof profound and enlightening ideas and thoughts are provided. But the debate stillcontinues, as there is no such a theory that can draw a conclusion to the enduringdebate.Ferdinand de Saussure (2001), known as the father of the modern linguistics, putup with the term “arbitrariness” and advocated it as the first principle of linguistic signs.In his most famous book, Course in General Linguistics, he claims “the bond betweensignifier and signified is arbitrary.” His theory can also be interpreted as the relationbetween sound and meaning is arbitrary, which means he is favor of conventionalist.His theory is soon received by the main stream, and the impact of it has extended toalmost all of the linguistic schools, such as structuralism and formalism. Due to this,arbitrariness is generally regarded as one of the design features of language.Though Saussure’s theory has been dominant for quite a long time, there are stillsome scholars who think differently. Lu Weizhon (2011) claims that Jacobson is the firstscholar who challenged the theory of arbitrariness. He illustrates the term “iconicity” tohold the viewpoint that there does exist some internal correlation between sound andmeaning, and onomatopoeia is a best example. Since then, many linguists followe thisfield of study, such as Haiman and Newmeyer, but due to the enduring popularity ofSaussure’s theory, their research is comparatively marginal, failing to catch the attentionof the main stream of linguistics.
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1.2 The Objectives and Significance of the Research
In order to further investigate the relationship between the sound and meaning,many domestic and foreign scholars have changed their attitude from blindly supporting arbitrariness to viewing it dialectically. Among them, famous Chinese linguist XuGuozhang is a typical representative. Xu Guozhang (1988) believes that on the one handarbitrariness is reasonable in some aspects, but on the other hand we cannot deny theexistence of the internal relationship between the sound and meaning. Under suchcircumstances, the researchers at home and abroad began to expand a wide range ofresearch in phonosemantics, covering languages of most countries of the world. Bydoing so they try to provide more empirical basis to support non-arbitrariness. Foreignscholars mainly concentrate on the study of proving the existence of phonosemanticsand how iconicity works; domestic scholars start the research relatively late, and thecontent of the study is shallower. Most of the study is about the introduction ofphonosemantics and theories related. The study about the working mechanism ofphonosemantics and the application of it is relatively less. Therefore, it is necessary tocarry out further research on the application of phonosemantics, and at the same timeexplain how it works. Under such circumstance, this thesis chooses the phoneme /m/ asresearch object, and undertakes the research objectives as following:(1) To make clear the senses /m/ tends to carry.(2) To find out relationships of the various senses of /m/.(3) To investigate the possible connections between various senses of /m/.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 The Controversy between Arbitrariness and Non-arbitrariness
In the western countries, discussion about the relationship between sound andmeaning can be traced back to the debate between kratylos and Thamyris of “name” and“real”. Wan Yin (2007) points out that both Socrates and Kratylos believe that word andits representatives have a certain inherent, natural connection between, thus they supportthat language is non-arbitrary; While Thamyris holds the view that the relationshipbetween words and meaning is arbitrary, which is established by usage, namely, hesupports the arbitrariness of language. This debate, to a certain extent, trigged thesubsequent scholars to study in this field. Yin Tiechao (2010) points out that the famouswestern philosopher Plato is in favor of the Kratylos’s point of view; while Aristotlethinks differently, he believes that the relationship between words and things is totallyarbitrary. Therefore, in western countries the debate about language sign and concept itrefers to is evolved into the dispute between “naturalism” represented by Plato and“conventionalist” represented by Aristotle.In China, Xun Zi has analyzed the relationship between “name” and “real”. Hethinks the naming of things is closely related to convention, as the name of things do notexist naturally, on the contrary, it is given by the people through usage. To a certainextent, Xun Zi supports that language symbol is arbitrary .In his view, there is nointrinsic connection between sound and meaning, people gradually give things somekind of certain names through usage.
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2.2 Study of Phonosemantics
Although phonosemantics is established thirty years ago, the study on this issuestarted thousands years ago. So, in order to further understand this issue we have totrace back to the researches of phonosemantics before this subject is officiallyestablished. And this thesis will mainly talk about the studies since 20thcentury. Duringthis period, the research methods of phonosemantics can be classified into three types:theoretical study, psycholinguistic experiment study and large scale quantitative study.The theoretical study starts earliest, and is almost investigated by all schools oflinguistics. According to their points of view, namely, the relationship between soundand meaning is arbitrary or not, they can be classified into two groups. The first groupcontains scholars from structuralism school such as Saussure, Firth, Bloomfield;formalism school represented by Chomsky. Saussure regards arbitrariness as the firstprinciple of language, Chomsky thinks that language is a mental mechanism, thus thelanguage symbols are independent from the concept it refers to. The other groupcontains scholars who hold the opposite opinion, they think the connections betweensound and meaning does exist. The author will talk about the latter group in detail.Otto Jespersen (1922) holds the view on the relationship between sound andmeaning quite different from Saussure’s, he points out in English, Latin, Greek,German, the vowel /i/ is easily related to small things, while vowel /u/, /o/ and /a/ aremore easily connected with big things. He disapproves the arbitrariness of languagewhich denies any kind of sound symbolism, apart from echoisms and onomatopoeia,and regards our words as a collection of accidental and irrational associations of soundand meaning. He claims that there are some words that we feel adequate to express theconcepts it refers to, and sound symbolism makes some words more fit to survive.Magus (2001:146) points out Jespersen considers phonosemantics not only an activefactor in the inception of language, but also a productive synchronic influence inlanguage use and development.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundation .....12
3.1 Theory of Categorization .........12
3.1.1 Classical Theory of Categorization.... 12
3.1.2 Cognitive Theory of Categorization ........... 13
3.2 Conceptual Metaphor......15
3.2.1 The Nature of Conceptual Metaphor .......... 15
3.2.2 The Classification of Metaphor ......... 17
3.2.3 Polysemy through Metaphorical Extension ......... 18
3.3 Conceptual Metonymy ....19
3.4 The Cognitive Models of Meaning Extension....22
3.4.1 The Chain Model .... 22
3.4.2 The Radial Model ............ 23
3.4.3 The Synthetic Model........ 24
3.5 Summary ........ 24
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Implications....... 26
4.1 Data collection......... 26
4.2 Various Senses of /m/ .......28
4.3 Analysis of the Senses of /m/ from Cognitive Perspective ...........33
4.4 The Implications of /m/ for Brand Naming .......38
Chapter 5 Conclusion........ 43
5.1 Major Findings of the Study ....43
5.2 Limitations of the Study ...........44
5.3 Suggestions for Future Study............45
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Implications
The meaning extension is usually studied at the level of words, for example,polysemy is studied by many linguists from cognitive perspective. Based on their studywe can draw the conclusion that metaphor and metonymy can be applied as themechanism to explain the meaning extension of the words, and prototype theory can beapplied to organize the relationship between various meanings of the words. And fromthe discussion of chapter 2 we know that the relationship between the meaning of theword and the speech sound of it is not totally arbitrary, there does exist some kind ofcorrespondence. As the speech sounds of the word are pronounced by the gathering ofphonemes, which are defined as the smallest unit of language, thus we can assume thatphoneme can carry meanings directly. And we can also assume that each phoneme canbear not only one single meanings, which means polysemy works on phoneme level. Inthis study, the hypothesis is that the phoneme /m/ contains eight kinds of senses in total.In this chapter, the process of data collection is going to be explained first, and thenvarious senses of /m/ will be demonstrated and classified. Metaphor and metonymy willbe applied to analyze the possible connections between the senses. Finally, the subtypesof senses will also be analyzed.
4.1 Data collection
To figure out the various senses that /m/ contains, we should first study at the levelof word. The hypothesis is that words containing phoneme /m/ possess some particularsenses, without /m/, those senses will lost. Based on this assumption, we can say that/m/ is sense bearing and the sense is rooted in its articulation. So we should collectwords that have such articulation. The phoneme /m/ is only pronounced by the letter m,so the first step is to collect the words which contains letter m. But during the collection,the author found out that in some cases even though the word contains letter m, forexample, the word mnemonic, mniaceae and Mnemosyne, the phoneme /m/ is notpronounced. There is no denying that every letter in a word must be pronounced in theorigin, but the rule of pronunciation changed for the evolution of language. To explainsuch cases, we should put the evolution of the language into consideration. According toAmerican linguist and psychologist George Kingsley Zipf, in his book Human Behaviorand the Principle of Least Effort (1949), when people are using language they are actually governed by the “Principle of Least Effort”, which means there is a tendencyfor people to use the simpler language to express the same meaning. And this principleworks at every level of language, such as lexicon, syntax, pragmatics and phonetics.Polysemy is a typical example of this principle, in the origin one word can only carryone meaning, as times goes by, many words start to carry more than one meanings. Forour case, the unpronounced letter m is also caused by the “Principle of Least Effort”.Elision, contraction, liaison and assimilation are usually applied to modify sounds toensure the utterance more fluent, which may make some letters of the word not bearticulated. So it does not matter whether the letter m is pronounced or not, the meaningof the phoneme /m/ can still be carried.
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Conclusion
The debate on whether the relationship between the sound and meaning of a wordis arbitrary or not has lasted for thousands of years. Some scholars like Saussure holdthe view that there is no natural bound between the sound and meaning of a word,which means the relationship between them is arbitrary. While some other scholars likeJakubson think differently, they have proved that there does exist some sort ofconnection between sound and meaning of a word by doing a lot of experiments. Thesubject focusing on the relationship between sound and meaning is calledphonosemantics. From the perspective of phonosemantics, the author chooses thephoneme /m/ as the research target. The author has collected 540 words from OnlineEtymology Dictionary and checked their meaning in OED. Then, the author found thatthe senses that /m/ contains can be classified in to eight categories, they are: 1) wordsrelated to “mouth”; 2) words related to “human”; 3) words related to “move”; 4) wordsrelated to “water”; 5) words related to “cover”; 6) words related to “mind”; 7) wordsrelated to “change”; 8) words related to “measure”. After that, the author analyzes thepossible connections of these senses from cognitive perspective by using theories ofcategorization, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. In addition, the 104words which do not belong the eight groups are also explained. Finally, the author talksabout the implications of the research findings for brand naming.
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References (abbreviated)