The repetition of phonemic characteristics in radical mor, phemes in sets of synonyms from Indo-european languages

With these few words the famous linguist A. Maillet concisely formulated the objections against the intrinsic correlation of sound and meaning, objections which are heid to be valid still today. The modern structuralistic school logically developed this statement of the reciprocal independence of sound and meaning with the explicit affirmation that the meaning of a phoneme consists only in its difference from other phonemes in a given linguistic system. The statement completed in this manner became the fundamental theorem of all structuralistic views on language notwitnstancting differences ih detail. Exceptiorially, neogrammarians and structuralists admit a certain intrinsic correlation between the sound and its meaning in the case of so called ono matopoetic (imitative) ad expressive words. But for neither school these words represent an organic element of any linguistic system; it is considered only a rare and marginal event which can be easily disregarded.