Language Magazine – Staff Writer
“It is a long established characteristic of natural human language that the relationship between the sounds that make up a word and the meaning behind that word is arbitrary. Since Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure postulated the arbitrary nature of signs the nonexistent relationship between signifier and signified was considered a universal property of human language. The onomatopoeia is often sited as an argument against Saussure’s idea because these words directly represent their meaning through sound. In a recent study, titled Iconicity can Ground the Creation of Vocal Symbols, a group of linguists examined this relationship between sounds and words in a laboratory setting.” (more)