Other Types
In their Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui point out several other types of sound symbolism in Japanese, that relate phonemes and psychological states. For example, the nasal sound gives a more personal and speaker-oriented impression than the velars and ; this contrast can be easily noticed in pairs of synonyms such as ので node and から kara which both mean because, but with the first being perceived as more subjective. This relationship can be correlated with phenomimes containing nasal and velar sounds: While phenomimes containing nasals give the feeling of tactuality and warmth, those containing velars tend to represent hardness, sharpness, and suddenness.
Similarly, i-type adjectives that contain the fricative in the group shi tend to represent human emotive states, such as in the words 悲しい kanashii (sad), 寂しい sabishii (lonely), 嬉しい ureshii (happy), and 楽しい tanoshii (enjoyable). This too is correlated with those phenomimes and psychomimes containing the same fricative sound, for example しとしとと降る shitoshito to furu (to rain / snow quietly) and しゅんとする shun to suru (to be dispirited).
The use of the gemination can create a more emphatic or emotive version of a word, as in the following pairs of words: ぴたり / ぴったり pitari / pittari (tightly), やはり / やっぱり yahari / yappari (as expected), 放し / っ放し hanashi / ppanashi (leaving, having left in a particular state), and many others.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Sound Symbolism
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