Phonosemantics

[Rossitza Kyheng]

Dear M.Belianine,

There is the very exaustive and systematic bibliography on
phonosemantics (online) of Margaret Magnus:
http://www.conknet.com/~mmagnus/Bibliography.html

For information, Margaret Magnus is the author of monograph "Gods of the
word : archetypes in the consonants", Kirksville, Mo. : Thomas Jefferson
University Press,1999.
E-mail: mmagnus at conknet.com

Some publications online can be found on her site "Iconicity in Language",
http://www.trismegistos.com/IconicityInLanguage/default.html
including the interesting comparative research of Sean A. Day on Romance
and German languages "Trends in Synesthetically Colored Graphemes and
Phonemes"
http://www.ncu.edu.tw/~daysa/Colored-Letters.htm

Relating to Bulgarian, the research of Vassil Raynov announces what his
research attests  what "A" is associate  systematically with red, "shva"
- with black, "E" with blue, while "O" and "U" are diffused (Raynov,
Vassil. Poststrukturalizm't i ezikovata teoriya, izd. Trud, 2000, p.74).

That doesn't confirm Sean A.Day's results as below:
[a] - red 39%, brown 20%
[i] - white 35%, black 34%, yellow 23%
[E] - white 29%, yellow 29%
[o] - white 31%, black 21%, red 19%
[u] - blue 24%, grey 14%, green 14% (in general dark)

Note: The Margaret Magnus' and Sean A.Day's works concern also consonants.

I hope this information will useful for you.

Cordially
           Rossiza Milenkova-Kyheng

I can send you (if there needs) a hard copy of the classical work in
this field of E.Sapir "A Study in Phonetic Symbolism", (Journal of
Experimental Psychology 12, 1929,pp. 225-239.). Let me know.


Belianine Valeri wrote:

> Hello dear Discoursers!
> I am a psycholinguist.
>
> I was dealing with sound symbolism and found out that
> there is such a theory that every letter (and sound) has its meaning.
>
> For example, there are pleasant and unpleasant sounds (for some national ear).
> Thus according to some investigations, Russian ZH is unpleasant
> while L soft is pleasant (mild).
> R for Russians is masculine, rude and energetic,
> while F is dark, weak and dangerous.
>
> And all the vowels may have some kind of colour. E.g. for Russians A (as in cup) is red,
> I (like in film) is blue, E (like in let) is green, etc.
> Some computer programs use it for Russian text analysis.
> I am involved in a project of making the same in English.
> I suppose that this is closely connected with the investigations of Charles Osgood.
>
> And I thought that some of you may have some data concerning this.
>
> If anyone knows some investigations on the English material,
> please let me know offline. vbelyanin at mtu.ru
>
> Val Belianine, www.textology.ru
>
>