1980 Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 183-191
There were two streams of research in the phonetically symbolic hypothesis: The analystic approach originating with Sapir (1929) investigated the relationship between the vowel sounds and the specific dimensions as large-small in the semantics; the holistic approach appeoning with Tsaru on Frise (1933) tried to clarify that the subjects could guess the meaning of unknown words in non-cognated languages. The purpose of this research was to clarify the relationship betwen the phonetic and the meaning components; the former was extracted from Japanese onomatopoeias on letter-morphemes by multi-variate analyses and the latter by both the SD technique and the association method. This research was based on the re-written phonetically symbolic hypothesis of plato's Theaetetus (201E-202C).
65 Japanese onomatopoeias systematicaly selected (TABLE 1) were used as stimuli, and produced the SD data, the associated nouns, and the associated verbs by a total of 300 subjects. The principal factor and the geomax rotation methods were used. However, the matrix of stimuli X stimuli were introduced by the coefficient of concordance based on the phonetic elements (analysis I), by the linear transformed city block “d” on the 9-SD scales (analysis II), by the coefficient of concordance on the 6803 associated nouns (analysis III), and by the coefficient of concordance on the 6245 associated verbs (analysis IV), The purpose of analysis V was to demonstrate the relationship among the component extracted from the previons 4 analyses by Johnson (1967)'s max method.
The result of the analysis I oppears in TABLE2: the component I-1 related to /n/ and /r/, I-2 to /r/ and /o/, I-3 to /a/ and /k/, I-4 to assimilated sounds, I-5 to /o/, I-6 to /a/, I-7 to /I/, I-8 to /p/, I-9 to /u/, I-10 to /b/, I-11 to /k/, and I-12 to /t/. The result of the analysis II is shown in TABLE 3: the component II-1 related to negative evaluation, II-2 and II-4 to dynamism, and II-3 to fatigue. TABLE 4 shows the result of the analysis III: the component III-1 related to sounds or audition, III-2 to walking, III-3 to water, III-4 to facial expressions, III-5 to anxiety III-6 to fluid, and 111-7 to impatience. The result of the analysis IV oppears as in TABLE 5. The component IV-1 related to activity, IV-2 to anxiety, IV-3 to facial expressions, IV-4 to sounds or audition, IV-5 to negative evaluation or fatigue, IV-6 to fluid, IV-7 to walking, and IV-8 to restlessness. The result of the analysis V is in TABLE 6 and Figure 1. The most robust clusters were {(I-5(/o/), IV-8 (restless-ness)}, {I-7 (/i/), III-7 (impatience)}, and {I-10 (/b/), III-6 (fluid)}. Other significant relations between phonetic and meaning components were I-8 (/p/) to II-2 (dynamism), I-9 (/u/) both to III-5 (anxiety) and III-6 (fluid), and I-12 (/t/) both to III-2 (walking) and IV-8 (restlessness).
The phoneticall symbolisc hypothesis was matching the Japanese onomatopoeias. The symbolic relationship /o/ to restlessness, /i/ to impatience. and /b/ to fluid, and others were newly discoverd. The SD technique resulted only 4 components covered small regions in meaning sphere, but the association method bring much abundant components. And the classical distinction between sound imitation and condition imitation in Japanese onomstopoeias could not be supported.
