Challenging the Morpheme: Cross-Linguistic Occurrences of Phonaesthemic Structures

The article below sets out to demonstrate that a long-time underestimated concept in linguistics, the phonaestheme, may find its rightful place in morphological theory alongside the morpheme, traditionally defined as the smallest linguistic unit carrying meaning. The analysis includes a critical sur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEast-West cultural passage Vol. 23; no. 1; pp. 92 - 107
Main Author Creangă, Maria-Teodora
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published LUCIAN BLAGA University Press of Sibiu 01.06.2023
Editura Universitatii LUCIAN BLAGA din Sibiu
Sciendo
Subjects
arbitrariness of the sign
Comparative Linguistics
iconism
Morphology
phonaesthemes
phonaesthesia
Phonetics / Phonology
phonosemantics
Semantics
phonaesthesia
phonaesthemes
phonosemantics
arbitrariness of the sign
iconism
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Summary:The article below sets out to demonstrate that a long-time underestimated concept in linguistics, the phonaestheme, may find its rightful place in morphological theory alongside the morpheme, traditionally defined as the smallest linguistic unit carrying meaning. The analysis includes a critical survey of literature in the field intended to offer a more comprehensive and integrated theoretical perspective on the nature of the phonaestheme and reject the idea that the sign is exclusively arbitrary. Once this objective has been achieved, the focus of the article will switch to determining how phonaesthemic meaning occurs crosslinguistically and to what extent. In order to achieve this, Margaret Magnus’s phonosemantic classification will be discussed and applied in the case of Romanian phonaesthemes.
ISSN:1583-6401
2067-5712
2067-5712
DOI:10.2478/ewcp-2023-0008