Sound symbolism is not “marginal” in Chinese: Evidence from diachronic rhyme books

Contrary to the widespread notion that linguistic signs are arbitrary, researchers have consistently demonstrated the existence of sound symbolism in language, providing evidence for non-arbitrariness in sound-meaning associations. However, much evidence of this kind is based on a limited subset of vocabulary and falls short of systematically demonstrating the pervasive nature of sound symbolism and, especially, its central, rather than marginal, role in language. Furthermore, a historical perspective is lacking to determine whether sound symbolism is merely a feature of archaic languages or has remained a significant element throughout the evolution of languages. This research pioneers a diachronic analysis of sound symbolism in Chinese using historical rhyme books to trace its presence on the vocabulary scale. Employing natural language processing techniques along with statistical methods, it investigates whether phonologically related Chinese characters, as documented in rhyme books, also demonstrate semantic congruence, which would suggest that the phonological aspects of characters are inherently meaningful and hence indicate a systematic, rather than random or purely arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings. Statistically significant results from our analysis of all four analyzed rhyme books confirm the robustness of sound symbolism over a large span of the Chinese language continuum, and a granular analysis of a representative one of them further reveals that sound symbolism is manifest across various levels of phonological organization, including initials, finals, etc. This study initiates an innovative combination of traditional materials with novel techniques to enrich and expand existing knowledge about sound symbolism, providing both methodological advancement and empirical insights.