SOUND SYMBOLISM OF PEJORATIVE MEANING IN INTERJECTIONS (BASED ON RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES)
Pejoratives are the striking example of phonoiconic (sound-iconic) words. The relationship between the sound form and the meaning in them is most obvious. The problem is that there is no detailed comprehensive and systematic research of sound symbolism of pejorative meaning in Russian phonosemantics, in spite of a few instances mentioning the relationship between labialization and pejorative meaning, the relationship of some acoustic indications with the term “pejorative”, the relationship of nasalization and glottalization with pejorative connotation. The article presents the results of the author’s study, the aim of which is to find out the phonosemantical means of expressing the pejorative connotation. The author analyzed Russian and English pejorative interjections, because interjections are sound-symbolic words as they correspond to all the criteria of sound-symbolic words. The study presents the methodology of analyzing the correlation between the form of a word and its meaning. At the beginning of the experiment both groups of interjections, both Russian and English, were analyzed separately from each other. Firstly, the frequency of graphon usage was defined in each group. Secondly, the frequency in pejorative interjections was compared with the relative letter frequency in both languages. Finally, graphon frequency in both languages was compared and interpreted together. The results are shown in the text of the article by means of the tables and diagrams. The main tendencies in expressing the pejorative meaning are as follows: by labialization (graphons O, U), by plosive consonants (graphon B), velar consonants (K, G), glottal consonant (H), and vowel A.