Rendering the Notion of Luminosity in the English Language: The Effectiveness of Studying Iconicity of English Words by Means of an Experimental Data

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Theory and Practice of Translation, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia

2 Department of Foreign Languages, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia

3 Department of Foreign Languages, St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University (ETU) “LETI”, St. Petersburg, Russia

Abstract

This paper examines the iconicity of the semantic group of English words that indicate brightness. The study's word corpus was derived from Roget's Thesaurus and reduced to 77 lexemes through additional in-depth etymological analysis. The analysis's conclusions indicated that phonemes like /b/, /l/, and /g/ contribute to the way the English language expresses luminosity. Subsequent investigation showed that the initial phonaesthemes bl-, fl-, and gl- and the concept of luminosity were correlated exactly. Additionally, the study demonstrated the value of using an experimental data statistical method to obtain trustworthy estimates of the distribution of a discrete random variable in order to study the iconicity of English words.

Keywords

Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics
Volume 14, Issue 3
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Research in Applied Linguistics (ICRAL 2023), October 30, 2023, Kazan, Russia
October 2023
Pages 324-330

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