One has to make careful distinctions here.  What the linguists call the
'transparencies' behind words (namely, the link between word and meaning
that enabled the original word to be accepted) includes, among others,
onomatopoeia and synaesthesia.  There are examples of these that present no
chance of confusion:  for example, 'creak' is a SOUND-SOUND link, and is
plainly onomatopoeic;  Keats's line in 'Lamia' -- 'She writhed about,
convulsed with scarlet pain', uses the colour scarlet as an image for a
pain, which is an example of a COLOUR-PAIN link, a synaesthetic one.
Synaesthesia applies to links across sensory modalities (both actual ones,
for example, for those persons who have sensory experiences of colour when
they hear certain musical keys, etc.) and synaesthetic links as
transparencies in words ('a loud perfume', 'acacia' -- a thorny tree).

However, there is a form of synaesthesia that it is easy to mistake for
onomatopoeia.  Thus occurs when the SOUND of the word is linked to an item
in another sensory modality.  Note that in the plain synaesthetic cases the
sound of the word is idle -- to describe a perfume as 'loud' as John Donne
did, does not depend for its effect on the sound of the word.  However, if
we describe a smell as 'acrid', there is no doubt that the 'sharp' phonemes
bear a likeness to the sensations in the nose.  This is a SOUND-FEELING
link, a synaesthetic one.  The 'sharpness' of the sound results from the
fact that the phoneme /k/ contains a markedly rapid change of sound, the
rapidity of the change matching the distinctness of the feeling.

Similarly, the second of Tennyson's lines here from 'The Lotos-Eaters':

'And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff, to fall and pause and fall did seem'

The second line here matches the hesitating and repeated SOUND of the words
to the SIGHT of the stream falling from ledge to ledge.

Carroll's 'snicker-snack' thus contains synaesthetic likenesses between the
SOUND of the words and the SIGHT of the blade quickly slicing through the
Jabberwock's neck.  The doubling of the consonants also produces that type
of half-rhyme known as 'pararhyme' (see Wilfred Owen's poem 'Strange
Meeting', which uses it throughout), and this rhythm makes salient the speed
and satisfactory completion of the act, like some rapid machine finishing
its performance in seconds.

There is, however, no rule which says that onomotopoeia and synaesthesia
cannot work together, and here I do sense also that the SOUND of the words
does match the SOUND of the blade as it slices.

So onomatopoeia is a SOUND-SOUND transparency, and synaesthesia applies to
any cross-modality one, e.g. COLOUR-PAIN, and so it does include
SOUND-SIGHT, SOUND-FEELING, SOUND-SMELL, etc.

If on some other planet the language-using species employed light as their
medium of communication (there are sea-creatures on earth that use light to
signal), then a red light would mean 'red', their equivalent of an example
of onomatopoeia, and if one word used a red light for the sound of a trumpet
that would be an example of synaesthesia.

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256

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