Phonaesthetics
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in
More broadly, the British linguist David Crystal has regarded phonaesthetics as the study of "phonaesthesia" (i.e., sound symbolism and phonesthemes): that not just words but even certain sound combinations carry meaning.[3] For example, he shows that English speakers tend to associate unpleasantness with the sound sl- in such words as sleazy, slime, slug, and slush,[4] or they associate repetition lacking any particular shape with -tter in such words as chatter, glitter, flutter, and shatter.[5]
Euphony and cacophony
Euphony is the effect of sounds being perceived as pleasant, rhythmical, lyrical, or harmonious.[6][7][8] Cacophony is the effect of sounds being perceived as harsh, unpleasant, chaotic, and often discordant; these sounds are perhaps meaningless and jumbled together.[9] Compare with consonance and dissonance in music. In poetry, for example, euphony may be used deliberately to convey comfort, peace, or serenity, while cacophony may be used to convey discomfort, pain, or disorder. This is often furthered by the combined effect of the meaning beyond just the sounds themselves.
The California Federation of Chaparral Poets uses Emily Dickinson's "A Bird Came Down the Walk" as an example of euphonious poetry, one passage being "...Oars divide the Ocean, / Too silver for a seam" and John Updike's "Player Piano" as an example of cacophonous poetry, one passage being "My stick fingers click with a snicker / And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys".[10]
Research
David Crystal's 1995 paper "Phonaesthetically Speaking" explores lists, created by reader polls and individual writers, of English words that are commonly regarded as sounding beautiful, to search for any patterns within the words' phonetics. Frequently recurring example words in these lists include gossamer, melody, and tranquil. Crystal's finding, assuming a British Received Pronunciation accent, is that words perceived as pretty tend to have a majority of a wide array of criteria; here are some major ones:[11]
- Three or more syllables (e.g., goss·a·mer and mel·o·dy)
- Stress on the first syllable (e.g., góssamer and mélody)
- /l/ is the most common consonant phoneme, followed by /m, s, n, r, k, t, d/, then a huge drop-off before other consonants (e.g., luminous contains the first four)
- Short vowels (e.g., the schwa, followed in order by the vowels in lid, led, and lad) are favored over long vowels and diphthongs (e.g., as in lied, load, loud)
- Three or more stop consonants, and so on)
A perfect example word, according to these findings, is tremulous. Crystal also suggests the invented words ramelon /ˈræməlɒn/ and drematol /ˈdrɛmətɒl/, which he notes are similar to the types of names often employed in the marketing of pharmaceutical drugs.
Cellar door
The
The origin of cellar door being considered as an inherently beautiful or musical phrase is mysterious. However, in 2014, Nunberg speculated that the phenomenon might have arisen from Philip Wingate and
Tolkien, Lewis, and others have suggested that cellar door's auditory beauty becomes more apparent the more the word is dissociated from its literal meaning, for example, by using alternative spellings such as Selador, Selladore, Celador, Selidor (an island name in
See also
- Affection (linguistics)
- Assimilation (linguistics)
- Cacofonix
- Dissimilation
- Epenthesis
- Inherently funny word
- Japanese sound symbolism
- Onomatopoeia
- Phonestheme
- Phono-semantic matching
- Phonosemantics
- Sandhi ("euphonic" rules in Sanskrit grammar)
- Vogon poetry
- Vowel harmony
Notes
- ^ Howells attributes to a "courtly Spaniard" the quote, "Your language too has soft and beautiful words, but they are not always appreciated. What could be more musical than your word cellar-door?"[14]
- ^ Nunberg identifies "Playmates" as an earlier song from which "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" was derived; in fact the derivation is the reverse.[19][20]
- ^ In a 1966 interview, Tolkien said: "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me—'cellar door', say. From that, I might think of a name 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow".[23]
- Welsh for me cellar doors [i.e. such beautiful words] are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.[24]
References
- ^ Holmes, John R. (2010) "'Inside a Song': Tolkien's Phonaesthetics". In: Eden, Bradford Lee (ed.). Middle-earth Minstrel. McFarland. p. 30
- ^ Shisler, Benjamin K. (1997). Phonesthetics". The Influence of Phonesthesia on the English Language.
- ISBN 9781444356755.
- ISBN 978-0226122038.
- ^ Allan, Keith (2014). "Phonesthesia". Linguistic Meaning. Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics.
- ^ "CACOPHONY, Literary Terms and Definition by Carson-Newman University". Retrieved 10 September 2013.
- ^ "Definition of Cacophony". 19 August 2013. Retrieved 10 September 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-7641-1614-8.
- ^ "Cacophony". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
- ^ "Poetic Devices" (PDF). chaparralpoets.org. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
- ^ Crystal, David (1995). "Phonaesthetically Speaking". English Today 42.2 (April): 8–12. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ a b Barrett, Grant (14 February 2010). "On Language: Cellar Door". New York Times Magazine. p. 16.
- ^ a b Nunberg, Geoff (26 February 2010). "The Romantic Side of Familiar Words". Language Log. Retrieved 27 February 2010.
- ^ Howells, William Dean (March 1905). "Editor's easy chair". Harper's Magazine: 645.
- ISBN 0-8112-1157-6: "I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was 'cellardoor'. It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside — the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. He also enjoyed going to restaurants and hearing the waiter ask if he would like salad or roast vegetables, because again the phrase 'salad or' could be heard. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with 'celandine', where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely."
- ^ Kois, Dan (23 July 2003). "Everything you were afraid to ask about "Donnie Darko"". Slate.
- ^ Ross Smith, Inside Language, Walking Tree Publishers (2007), p. 65)
- ^ Nunberg, Geoff (16 March 2014). "Slide down my cellar door". Language Log. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
- ^ Nunberg, Geoff (17 March 2014). "GN response to comment by "Emma"". Language Log. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
- ^ Lovelace, Melba (15 July 1989). "Words to "Playmates" Song Stir Up Controversy". News OK. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
- ^ Colby, Frank (3 November 1949). "Take My Word For It". Miami Daily News. p. 45. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
- ^ Boyd, Louis M. (15 January 1979). "Quoth the raven "cellar door"?". Reading Eagle. Reading, Pennsylvania. p. 5. Retrieved 27 February 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-374-15409-7.
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964). Angles and Britons. University of Wales Press. p. 36.
- ISBN 9780553262506.