音象徴 (sound_symbolism) は，言語学では伝統的に周辺的な扱いを受けてきた．この件については「#1269. 言語学における音象徴の位置づけ」 ([2012-10-17-1]) をはじめとする一連の記事で取り上げてきた．
　そのような中で，Jespersen は異色である．1922年の論文で，英語やその他の言語における [i] の音象徴について熱っぽく論じているのだ．論文の冒頭から熱い．

Sound symbolism plays a greater role in the development of languages than is admitted by most linguists. In this paper I shall attempt to show that the vowel [i], high-front-unround, especially in its narrow or thin form, serves very often to indicate what is small, slight, insignificant, or weak. (283)

　[i] が「小さい」と結びつけられる音象徴は広く知られており，本ブログでも「#242. phonaesthesia と 遠近大小」 ([2009-12-25-1]) で触れた．Jespersen は，この論文のなかで，多くの例を挙げながら [i] の「小ささ」についてグイグイと議論していく．
　特におもしろいのは， little という，この話題との関連で真っ先に思い浮かぶ英単語についての論考である．"Semantic and Phonetic Changes" と題する第7節で，次のように述べている．

The influence on sound development is first seen in the very word little. OE. lytel shows with its y, that the vowel must originally have been u, and this is found in OSax. luttil, OHG. luzzil; cf. Serb. lud 'little' and OIr. lútu 'little finger' (Falk and Torp); but then the vowel in Goth. leitils (i.e. lītils and ON. lítinn is so difficult to account for on ordinary principles that the NED. in despair thinks that the two words are "radically unconnected". I think we have here an effect of sound symbolism. The transition in E. from y to it of course is regular, being found in innumerable words in which sound symbolism cannot have played any role, but in modern English we have a further slight modification of the sound which tends to make the word more expressive, I refer to the form represented in spelling as "leetle". In Gill's Logonomia (1621, Jiriczek's reprint 48), where he mentions the "particle" tjni (j is his sign for the diphthong in sign) he writes "a lïtle tjni man" with ï (his sign for the vowel in seen), though elsewhere he writes litle with short i. NED. under leetle calls it "a jocular imitation of a hesitating (?) or deliberately emphatic pronunciation of little". Payne mentions from Alabama leetle "with special and prolonged emphasis on the î sound to indicate a very small amount". I suspect that what takes place is just as often a narrowing or thinning of the vowel sound as a real lengthening, just as in Dan. bitte with narrow or thin [i], see above. To the quotations in NED. I add the following: Dickens Mutual Fr. 861 "a leetle spoilt", Wells Tono-B. 1. 92 "some leetle thing", id. War and Fut. 186 "the little aeroplane ... such a leetle thing up there in the night".---It is noteworthy that in the word for the opposite notion, where we should according to the usual sound laws expect the vowel [i] (OE. micel, Sc. mickle, Goth. mikils) we have instead u: much, but this development is not without parallels, see Mod. E. Gr. I. 3. 42. In Dan. dial, mög(el) for the same word the abnormal vowel is generally ascribed to the influence of the labial m; in both forms the movement away from i may have been furthered by sound-symbolic feeling. (301--02)

　「[i] = 小さい」という音象徴について，little の母音はポジティヴに，対義語 much の母音はネガティヴに反応し音変化を経てきた，という鋭い洞察だ．もともとの語源形との関連で音象徴を論じるのみならず，音変化の動機づけとしての音象徴を考察していくこともまた重要なのではないかと気付かされた．

　・ Jespersen, O. "Symbolic Value of the Vowel I." Philologica 1 (1922). Reprinted in Linguistica: Selected Papers in English, French and German. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1933. 283--303.

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