Rhyme over Reason

Advance praise: 'Rejecting the long dominant Saussurean view that language consists very largely of arbitrary sound-meaning associations and is primarily designed for the communication of referential meaning, Benczes takes us on a richly illustrated journey into a world of interrelated English word forms and of meanings affected by sounds and sound patterns. These lexical interactions are the expressive source of everyday language that serves to entertain, arouse, soothe and instruct as much as to inform. This is a book to tickle the reader's fancy, tempting us to try our own hand at discovering such phenomena as onomatopoeia and phonesthemes, rhyming compounds and irreversible binomials. These unconscious influences between form and meaning and form and form are all ways in which our language is continually shaped by what we already know - information essential for anyone concerned with first or second language learning or simply with delving more deeply into the nature of language.' Marilyn Vihman, University of York Advance praise: 'Rejecting the long dominant Saussurean view that language consists very largely of arbitrary sound-meaning associations and is primarily designed for the communication of referential meaning, Benczes takes us on a richly illustrated journey into a world of interrelated English word forms and of meanings affected by sounds and sound patterns. These lexical interactions are the expressive source of everyday language that serves to entertain, arouse, soothe and instruct as much as to inform. This is a book to tickle the reader's fancy, tempting us to try our own hand at discovering such phenomena as onomatopoeia and phonesthemes, rhyming compounds and irreversible binomials. These unconscious influences between form and meaning and form and form are all ways in which our language is continually shaped by what we already know - information essential for anyone concerned with first or second language learning or simply with delving more deeply into the nature of language.' Marilyn Vihman, University of York