Sound Metaphor in the Nominations of Speed (with Reference to the Russian Subdialects)

Abstract

In the Russian subdialects, there are many lexemes with the meaning of speed concerning the execution of some actions, and many of them have a figurative underlying form. The article refers to the nominations of high and low speed, motivated by designations of the sound’s acoustic characteristics, peculiarities of human speech, as well as to the “speed” vocabulary, based on the sound symbolism found in the dialects of the Russian North. To represent sounds of high speed, it is common to use interjections, derived from verbs with a meaning of a short and fast action, which is often accompanied by a sound (лоп, шорк), as well as onomatopoeic interjections (жик, фить). The analysis of lexemes of low speed based on the phonetic form of the motivating word demonstrates that sluggishness is associated with voiceless hushing sounds (шúшлеть, шошéлиться), palatalised resonant consonants, and front vowels [’у] and [’а] (алялва, тня). Fast and slow actions are compared with sounds which have certain acoustic properties. Speed is compared to sounds with a high tone (свистáть ‘to walk fast’), short sounds (шáркать ‘to run by with noise’) and sounds which emphasise the intensity of work (только сбóркает ‘to do something fast, at once’). Low speed is associated with quiet sounds, such as rustle or hissing. Speech codes are also used to describe sluggishness. The nominations actualise characteristics of duration (пкала ‘stammerer’ → ‘a sluggish person’), lack of clarity and distinctness in speech (ммлить ‘to do something very slow; to delay something’), and ineffectiveness (раздобáривать ‘to chat, to have useless talks’ → ‘to do something too slow, to dawdle’).

Keywords

• этнолингвистика
• русская диалектная лексика
• метафора
• семантическая деривация
• звукосимволизм.