52
Table 4.9 Phonesthemic Sounds and Their Meaning of Sound Symbolic Words of Combined Categories in Play Songs
No. Sound
Symbolism Category
Phonesthemic Sound
Meaning Frequency
Word Example
1.
Conventional Imitative
b- abrupt, loud onset
1 bark
dull impact 2
bounce -
ɪŋk eye movement
1 blink
t ʃ-
short 1
chirp kl-
abrupt onset 2
clap kr-
noisy impact 1
croak fl-
phenomena of movement
1 flap
movement in air 1
flutter gr-
low, guttural sound
2 growl
p- abrupt onset
1 pop
- ɛt
particled movement
1 rattle
r- irregular onset
1 roar
sn- quick separation
or movement 1
snap -
ɛš violent movement
1 splash
sw- to and fro
movement 3
sway -omp
clumsy 1
thump w-
back and forth 3
wag
2.
Conventional Synesthetic
i diminutive
1 itsy bitsy
The phonesthemic sounds displayed in Table 4.9 were three words more than the sounds presented in Table 4.8. Totally, there were sixteen phonesthemes
in 25 sound symbolic words of combined category. In detail, there were 24 conventional-imitative sound symbolic words containing fifteen phonesthemic
sounds, whereas only one conventional-synesthetic sound symbolic word which contains one phonesthemes, namely diminutives Bolinger, 1950, as cited in
53 Abelin, 1999, p. 32. The entire sound symbolic words containing the sixteen
phonesthemic sounds in Table 4.9 were presented in Appendix G.
54
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
As the final part of this thesis, this chapter consists of conclusions and recommendations sections. First, conclusions explain the main results of this
research in a simplified way. The second section offers recommendations for future researchers.
A. Conclusions
As mentioned in the first chapter, this research is aimed to classify the categories of sound symbolism found in both lullabies and play songs. Therefore,
the conclusions are put into two as follows. The first objective of this research is to classify sound symbolic words
found in lullabies. Its result was that there was only one category which did not appear in this song type, i.e. corporeal sound symbolism. The total sound
symbolic words collected to answer first research question was 15 words. The 15 sound symbolic words consisted of 3 imitative sound symbolic words, 6
conventional sound symbolic words, and 6 sound symbolic words of combined categories consisting of 4 imitative-conventional sound symbolic words and 2
synesthetic-conventional sound symbolic words Another objective of this research is to identify similar categories but
found in play songs. Since the number of play songs was three times larger than in lullabies, the total of sound symbolic words collected was larger too. There were
55 116 sound symbolic words in total; they were 55 imitative sound symbolic words,
22 conventional sound symbolic words, 10 corporeal sound symbolic words, and 2 synesthetic sound symbolic words. In addition, there were 30 words classified
into more than one category of sound symbolism; they were 1 corporeal-imitative sound symbolic word, 1 imitative-synesthetic sound symbolic word, 1
synesthetic-conventional sound symbolic word, and 24 imitative-conventional sound symbolic words.
This research also found minor findings revealing an absorbing piece of information for the readers. In play songs, there were more corporeal sound
symbolic words representing positive emotions than the ones representing negative emotions and physical states. The finding was likely to confirm that the
principal objective of play songs which is to amuse children was truly depicted in its corporeal sound symbolic words. There were other interesting findings related
to the topics of imitative sound symbolic words found in both types of English children songs. The topics most frequently appeared were sounds or noises made
by animalshumans and various types of movements. These findings might be useful for the public, especially children so that they can expand their vocabulary
in a fun way by singing lullabies or play songs.
B. Recommendations
Although scholars have conducted studies focusing on sound symbolism as their research topics, there are actually still limited research which analyzes the
application of sound symbolism in children literatures. The researcher encourages
56 the readers, future researchers in particular, to have an interest in conducting
further research focusing on similar topics after reading this thesis. Moreover, this research still needs some improvements since some aspects of it were not deeply
explored yet by the researcher. For example, the researcher did not explain in detail the age range of the frequently mentioned term children. The future
researchers are expected to be capable of delivering the better explanation dealing with this subject.
Besides, there remains a lot of things that can be deeply explored related to sound symbolism study and its contributions to children literatures. The
researcher believes there must be more other benefits of the application of sound symbolism in daily life.
