Iconicity in Korean consonantal symbolism

Abstract

Korean is well-known for its rich inventory of sound-symbolic words, ideophones, where three different laryngeal settings of the syllable-initial stop change to connote different degrees of intensity. In order to examine to what degree the observed iconic relations in Korean ideophones are naturally motivated, English speakers were asked to guess the relevant connotations of nonsense Korean ideophonic pairs which contrasted the laryngeal settings in word-initial stops. The result indicates that English-speaking listeners did not show a strong sensitivity towards the expected semantic effect of the stop alternation. This supports a conclusion that Korean consonantal symbolism is largely established by convention