Play Songs Definition of Terms
10 Pischedda 2011 conducted a research related to sound symbolism
entitled “Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism from English to Italian: The case of the
Diary of a Wimpy Kid .” In his research, he
concerned the use of sound symbolism in applied linguistics, namely translation in a children book which was presented like a combination between comic and
novel. As an Italian, he investigated how an English children book which was translated into Italian version aff
ected the Italian readers‟ understanding towards its content, particularly sound symbolic words or phrases found in it. Therefore,
there were two methods employed in his research. First, he collected sound symbolic words or phrases in both versions. Second, he created a survey
containing a list of sound symbolic words or phrases found in English versions and asked their meanings or intended objects to the respondents. The result of his
study was that Italian readers were more familiar with sounds in the form of interjection than lexicalized ones. Furthermore, referring to his research result, his
respondents as the representatives of Italian readers have fitted with English sound symbolism version. It reflected that there was a fundamental problem in
translating sound symbolic words or phrases into Italian, i.e. linguistic matter. The researcher, influenced by the Pischedda‟s findings, also conducted a
research concerning the use of sound symbolic words in children literature. Unlike his research, this research lifted up English children songs, lullabies and play
songs in particular, as the research subjects. Further, the main focus in this research was to discover the categories of sound symbolism articulated by Hinton,
Nichols, and Ohala 1994 which might be found both in lullabies and play songs.
11 Another study having much to contribute to this research is an empirical
research of sound symbolism conducted by Susan Janeen Parault in 2002. Her research, entitled “Sound Symbolism: A Possible Piece in the Puzzle of Word
Learning ”, scrutinized to what extent the capability of sound symbolism could
assist adult participants in vocabulary learning. To measure how far sound symbolic words might affect the adult participants‟ comprehension of word
knowledge, Parault conducted five studies consisting of two major purposes. The first purpose employing four studies was for finding the effects of sound
symbolism within words presented in isolation, whereas another purpose employing one study was for the effects of sound symbolism within words
embedded in context. She provided a set of unfamiliar English words presented in the guess phase and the recognition phase to test the participants. Her research
indicated positive results. The first four studies showed the usefulness of sound symbolism within words to assist the participants to choose the right definition of
the tested words presented in isolation. Similarly, the fifth study suggested the benefit of using context in sound symbolic words for vocabulary learning.
Ev en though this research was also inspired by Parault‟s research yet there
were a set of features making it different from the former research conducted by Parault 2002. First, this research concentrated on children literature, namely
lullabies and play s ongs. Unlike Parault‟s research concerning adult participants,
this research took literature related to children as its subject. Besides, this research was based on library study, which means it did not involve humans as its direct
participants. Therefore, it only analyzed sound symbolic words found in a number