Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech-sounds which aim is to imitate sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc.), by things (machines or tools), by people (singing, laughter, patter of feet), by animals. Combinations of speech sounds of this type as a rule is associated with the natural sounds.
Onomatopoeia can be distinguished into two types:
Direct; 2- indirect.
Direct onomatopoiea is a type of SD which is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, e. g. cuckoo ['kuku:], mew ['mju:], buzz.
Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning.
As for indirect onomatopoeia, it is a combination of sounds which has the aim to make the sound of the phrase an echo['ek ] of its sense. Sometimes it is called «echo-writing». It is the repetition of any sound in the utterance to imitate the process of something. For example:
The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain…
[s] produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.
Indirect onomatopoeia sometimes is effectively used by repeating not only the separate but the hole words, which are not onomatopoetic, e.g.
The Bells
Hear the sledges with the bells
Silver bells!
What a word of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
(Edgar Allan Poe)
Alliteration
The next phonetic SD is Alliteration. It has the aim to impact a melodic effect to the utterance. The 'essence of this SD is in the repetition of similar consonant sounds in the words.
Alliteration doesn't bear any meaning unless we agree that a sound meaning exists here. Sometimes a certain amount of information is contained in the repetition of sounds. So, certain sounds, if repeated, may produce a pecific effect, e.g.
After so many days, they saw a great, high, tall forest full of trees all speckled, spotted and slashed and hatched and crosshatched with shadows. ( say it quickly aloud, and you'll see how very shadow the forest must have been).
2. The Fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea… (Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From «The Rime of the Ancient Mariner»)
Alliteration can be regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author's idea. It helps to support some vague emotional atmosphere which each reader interprets for himself. But it should be noticed, that the choice of words doesn't depend primarily on the principle of alliteration because e'xactitude (точность) and sense may suffer. But using with inner connection with the sense of the utterance, alliteration produces aesthetic effect.
For information, in old English poetry this SD was one of the basic principles of verse and considered to be its main characteristic with rhythm. Each stressed meaningful word in a line had to begin with the same sound or combination of sounds. Sometimes alliteration even called initial rhyme. Now it is widely used in proverbs, tongue-twisters: Peter Piper picked a peck of picked pepper…