- Phonaesthetics
Phonaesthetics is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain
linguistic utterance s.Poetry is often considered euphonic, as is well-craftedliterary prose . Important phonaesthetic devices of poetry arerhyme ,assonance andalliteration . Closely related to euphony and cacophony is the concept ofconsonance and dissonance .The phrase "
cellar door " has some notoriety as the reputedly most euphonic sound combination of the English language (specifically, when spoken with a British accent).From this meaning should be distinguished the closely related but different concept of
phonaesthesia , which does not refer directly to aesthetic attributes of sound, but to phonetic elements that are inherently associated with asemantic meaning. The term was introduced byJ. R. Firth in 1930 "The phonæsthetic habits [...] and are of general importance in speech." Firth defined aphonaestheme as "a phoneme or cluster of phonemes shared by a group of words which also have in common some element of meaning or function, though the words may be etymologically unrelated."ub-phonematic euphony
In most languages, difficult to pronounce phonetic combinations will be adapted to allow more flowing speech, for reasons of ease of pronunciation rather than
aesthetics . These adaptations will be sub-phonematic at first, but over several generations will lead to phonematically relevantsound change s
*sandhi ("euphonic" rules in Sanskrit grammar)
*vowel harmony
*assimilation (linguistics)
*dissimilation
*elision
*epenthesis
*affection (linguistics)
*i-mutation ee also
*
cellar door
*"English and Welsh "
*inherently funny word
*phonosemantics
*onomatopoeia
*Japanese sound symbolism
*glossolalia
*symphony
*harmony
*Vilayanur S. Ramachandran References
*Ross Smith, "Inside Language - Linguistic and Aesthetic Theory in Tolkien", Walking Tree Publishers (2007), ISBN 978-3-905703-06-1.
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