ABSTRACT
Human dimensions in the sound universe can be recognized in the interaction of two complex spheres of relations. Nevertheless, as the author have argued in detail on another occasion, specific features are determined at the level of phonemes and appear in sound symbolism mostly in a combined state, where their symbolic value is always contextual. In Japanese culture the people find certain conventionalized ways of representing nature, typically expressed in words like kikinashi, a stylized way of interpreting natural sounds, especially bird and insect voices; and mitate, a conventional way of considering something fictitious, mimetic or artificial as real, authentic or natural. As for musical instruments, the effort has been made to exclude noises and to determine precisely the pitch of sounds. A highly artificial use of sound symbolism in musical composition is found in the work of some modern Western composers, such as Arnold Schonberg, Luciano Berio and Charles Amirkhanian.
