Research On The Association Of Sound And Sense

The study of sound and sense has been drawing great research interest of scholars from ancient to modern times due to the significant values in linguistics.From Plato's Cratylus Dialogue on the origins and correctness of various names and words to today's researches on sound and sense covering drama translation,poems analysis and so on,more and more academic works prove that there is an association between sound and sense.Actually,the core lying in the association of sound and sense is that sound is expressive.That is,sound can imply sense.Therefore,this study focuses on the association of sound and sense based on the purpose of how sound implying sense.Most of researchers concentrated on sound echoing sense from the perspective of onomatopoeic words and phonaesthemes,or from the perspective of pure theoretical explanations.And there are some problems needing attention in the previous studies.In general,onomatopoeic words are in a small amount of numbers,which cannot fully explain the relations between sound and sense.One phonaestheme can indicate various of literary meanings,which cannot definitely anchor the connections between sound and sense.Besides,the pure theoretical explanations lack the sufficient examples to support the arguments.In order to fully demonstrate the association between sound and sense with persuasive theories and examples,and in the instruction of equivalence principle,systemic functional phonology,sonority hierarchy,and the basic knowledge of vowels and consonants,this thesis analyzes three love poems So We'll Go No More A-Roving,Love's philosophy and Ode to Fanny from George Gordon Byron,Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats word for word,phoneme for phoneme.For the poets,George Gordon Byron,Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats are three representative poets in positive Romanticism,and all of them share the nearly same political stance and life experience.After the analysis,this paper gets several findings.As for the poem So We'll Go No More A-Roving,firstly,the strings of consecutive monosyllables suit the tone of Byronic hero in the poem.Then,the seamless rhyme scheme reaches the aims of meanings intensification and emotion sublimation.That is,the matching words of rhyme scheme carry the main information,and the recurring of rhyming feet lays the emphasis on emotions.Thirdly,semantic propinquity words in selection and combination achieve the aim of sound and sense equivalence.Fourthly,tight language and unadorned images can indicate a strong connection between the verbal and musical qualities from the perspective of metaphor and metonymy.As for the poem Love's Philosophy,firstly,the semantic opposition such as “small entity” versus “big entity”,can be reflected by the physical attributes of vowels and consonants,sonority hierarchy.Secondly,from the perspective of metaphor and metonymy,semantic antithesis can be reflected by the phonetic features of images.As for the poem Ode to Fanny,the same sound duration of phonemes makes the poem rhythmical and pleased.What's more,meter pattern can indicate Keats' struggling between reality and the pursuit of love.After analyzing the three poems from the perspective of systemic functional phonology,the thesis proves that tonic vowels are the focus of information.The analysis on the relations of sound and sense has given impetus to poems studies and added a new point to analyze poems.The study of sound and sense in this thesis can enrich the research on the association of sound and sense.