The American Journal of Psychology

The nature of the relationship between an object and its name has interested thinkers ince early times. At a period as early as that of the &reeks, there was much speculation about this general problem, the Sophists denying the possibility of any objective interconnection between object and name, and the Stoics affirming the objective validity of words.l A more particular question has been formulated by Jespersen as follows: "Is there a natural interconnection between sound and meaning? Do words acquire their meanings through sound-symbolism?"2 Even in a work dating from the fourth century B.C., Plato's dialogue Kratylos, we rlote an attempt o find in the sounds of certain letters of the alphabet bases for rlames, e.g., rho and iotow are said to express motion, and lambda smoothness.3 Since linguistic historians in modern times have been occupied chiefly with words which have already undergone xtensive phonetic and semantic hange, it is intelligible that many of them should have rejected entirely the possibility of sound-symbolism in names.