A Study On The Phonosemantic Motivatedness Of Paronyms

The generation of characters is accompanied by that of both phonological patterns and semantic meanings.If people isolate these two aspects,ignoring their relevance,it will not conform to the natural way of word generation.Based on paronyms from the Dictionary of Paronyms and Practical Dictionary of Paronyms,two types of variations during the process of word extension and divergence are analyzed,including those of grammatical properties and cognitive domains.According to these variations,these paronyms are classified into four groups.Meanwhile,the word family of "Wo(?)" is chosen as a representative example since all those variations are involved.Then on the basis of mental spaces and conceptual blending theory and spreading activation model,the phonosemantic motivatedness is analyzed in the paronym generation processes and the network of the word family of“Wo(?)”,which is followed by a further discussion on the phonosemantic motivations.The major findings are as follows:firstly,in Chinese language system,the source word may be generated by phonosemantic principles.Meanwhile,affected the Chinese acoustic idea of "inquiring into a paronym's meaning by its pronunciation",the phonological patterns of the source word are involved in the conceptual integration process of the newly invented paronyms.Thus the phonosemantic association of the paronym is motivated,but not arbitrary.Secondly,the phonosemantic motivatedness of paronyms restricts the spreading activation network of the word family.Revolving around the information of' the source word,the paronyms in a word family are interrelated phonosemantically through activation of adjacent places of articulation and similar conceptual nodes,which has gradually become a conventionality in Chinese language.Thirdly,cognitive factors such as accessibility,contiguity and salience all contribute to phonosemantic associations,which serve as cognitive bases of phonosemantic motivatedness.Besides,the disproportionate ratio between semantic meanings and phonological patterns is also a breeding ground for phonosemantic motivatedness of paronyms.This study has implications to the interdisciplinary study on western phonosemantics and Chinese acoustic exegesis.It is also of practical value to the Chinese language acquisition and cultural diffusion.