1. Introduction: “To invent a language arbitrarily without any reason for the choices made, is for the human soul, who needs for everything at least a partial reason, as painful as it is for the body to be tickled to death.” Herder 1770/1985 p. 85 (transl.D.F.)

What is the term arbitrary refers to? Is there any direct relation between the linguistic form and the linguistic meaning of a word? Why do words differ from language to language? What is onomatopoeic sounds and what is iconic means? Do they arbitrary? Is there any non-arbitrary symbol or word in the world? Do items and concepts, etc. in a language have names that correspond to their very nature (physis), or are the names of concepts and ideas, etc. arbitrary, and dependent upon an agreed upon convention? Does language fall somewhere in between these two positions?

These questions are those with which people deals with from the beginning of the history. In this paper I will try to examine; the meaning of arbitrariness, the view of Ferdinand de Saussure- the father of the modern linguistics- about the issue, the kinds of arbitrariness, the non-arbitrary symbols and words- onomatopoeia and iconic-, and the other non-arbitrary symbols. And I will try to support that the arbitrary feature is not wholly acceptable for all languages and all words in the languages. May main focus language will be English, but as a reference I will use Turkish and German as well as some other languages.

2. The Arbitrary and Non-arbitrary

2.1. What is the Term Arbitrariness? “Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish or Portuguese word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean "nothing". That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian or Serbian speakers nada means ‘hope’.” It is the definition given by the world’s best known e-encyclopedia, Wikipedia, for arbitrariness. According to the authorities in a university in America, arbitrariness is that “Form and meaning is not incoherently connected. There is no logic or reason that a hand in the world should be represented by the sound: [hænd]. The words of a language represent a connection between the sounds, which give its form, and a meaning, which those sounds represent. Meaning + Form = SIGN”

Now let’s look at some definitions from linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and other science men: “ 1- Saussure: Language is a convention and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter ... Because the sign is arbitrary, it follows no law other than that of tradition, and because it is based upon tradition, it is arbitrary. 'Arbitrary' ... should not imply that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker ... I mean that it is unmotivated i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified. Only differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others ... carry significance .. since one vocal image is no better suited than the next for what it is commissioned to express. ... 'Arbitrary' and 'differential' are two correlative qualities ... Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others. ... The arbitrary nature of the sign explains in turn why the social fact alone can create a linguistic system - by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value. ... A particular language-state is always the product of historical forces and these forces explain why the sign is unchangeable i.e. why it resists any arbitrary substitution. ... The community itself cannot control as much as a single word; it is bound to the existing language. ... No longer can language be identified with a contract pure and simple. 2- Hockett: Arbitrariness; the relation between a meaningful element in language and its denotation is independent of any physical and geometrical resemblance between the two ... or, as we say, the semantic relation is arbitrary rather than iconic. 3- Yuen Ren Chao: Language is a conventional system of habitual vocal behaviour. Before the establishment of a convention, any word could mean anything. 4- Englefield: The fact that languages are arbitrary is sufficient evidence that they were invented. In any language there are conventional ways of combining words to express the relations between ideas. There is no systematic correspondence between the forms of language and its meanings. 5- Hormann: What meaning is conditioned to which sign is basically quite arbitrary and therefore there is an element of randomness or absence of logical necessity in the relationship of sign and object signified. 6- Gregory: Just because words differ between languages, and because languages are so recent and change so rapidly, it is quite clear that our knowledge of the names of things cannot be innate. It cannot be built into the nervous system. Words and names cannot be inherited. 7- Wittgenstein: I want you to remember that words have these meanings which we have given them and we give them meanings by explanations. A word has the meaning someone has given it.”

As we understand from the definitions given above, arbitrariness is the linguistic term means that there is no direct relation between the form and the meaning of a word. Any word in any language differs from one another and also differs between the languages. For example, the English word ‘book’ is not the same neither in spelling nor in meaning with the word ‘pen’. In English we say ‘horse’ to a fast running animal but the Germans call ‘pferd’, the Frenchman ‘cheval’, the Cree Indian ‘misatim’, in Turkish we say ‘at’ and so on. Or another example ‘rose’ is the word we say for a flower; it is in Japanese and rosa in Spanish. Another good example of these difference can be exactly seen in the word love. What the others in the world say instead of love? -Afrikaans: liefe, -Albanian: dashuroj, -Alentejano(Portugal): Porra, -Alsacien: hoa, -Arabic: hebbak, -Assamese: tomak, -Basc: Maitea, -Batak: rohangk, -Bolivian: Quechua, -Bulgarian: Obicha, -Cantonese: Ngo, -Czech: miluji, -Esperanto: amas, -German: lieb, -Japanese: Suitonnen, -Turkish love, -Zulu: yakutha, and so on…

Another point here is that why we say a ‘wall’ a wall? Why is not it a dog or something else? Who distinguishes it? Who gave it that name? And what will happen if we say ‘cat’ instead of ‘wall’ when we try to define the object which covers a room? The answer is quite simple: there will be ambiguity. We will not be understood and the message that we try to send to the receiver will become different. Because the meaning is settled in our lexical dictionary with the symbol we gave to it. The words resemble the meaning and the shape what we gave to it as Wittgenstein mentioned.

2.2. What Saussure Says About the Subject? Suassure’s arbitrariness is simply that there is no natural connection between the signifier and the signified. That is simply that the signifier is unmotivated: arbitrary in relation to its signified with which it has no connection in deed. Saussure focused on that the use of symbol to designate the linguistic sign is awkward, for it is characteristic of symbols that they are never wholly arbitrary. For the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, Saussure claims that as the most important truth and explains it with saying “The hierarchical place of this truth is right at the top. Only gradually does one come to realize how many different facts are only ramifications, hidden consequences of that truth.

Saussure, he thinks that it is wrong to treat language as a mere nomenclature, so he turns to another way of interpretation of language, that is, the systematic analysis of language. Saussure’s Principle of arbitrariness, with a priority of arbitrariness to iconicity, is a reaction against the rival classical views of arbitrariness and iconicity. His principle of arbitrariness is oriented to his unique theory of synchronic structure of language. The so-called iconicity of the linguistic sign they claim is fundamentally based on its arbitrariness.

What he ignores when saying that is that he sees all the onomatopoeic and iconic symbols as a little part of language and he ignores them. And he ignores the sentences too, as he thinks sentences are infinite in length and cannot be counted. He divides language in to two sections; la langua and la parole. He takes words as the principle of la langua, which then turns into linguistic competence with Chomsky. So while saying that arbitrariness is the main principle of language he externalize sentences from la langua. Saussure is less dealt with the syntax.

2.3. Absolute and Relative Arbitrariness: “The fundamental principle of the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign does not prevent us from distinguishing in any language between what is intrinsically arbitrary---that is, unmotivated---and what is only relatively arbitrary. Not all signs are absolutely arbitrary. In some cases, there are factors which allow us to recognize different degrees of arbitrariness, although never to discard the notion entirely. The sign may be motivated to a certain extent.”

Compound words and derivational words are not absolutely arbitrary. They are relatively arbitrary. There is a direct relation between their sounds and meanings. With a particular language, signs may be partially motivated in a different way. For example, eighteen is not absolutely arbitrary, but relatively arbitrary. To Saussure, the process of combining eight and teen, to create new motivated signs is similar to the way in which we combine words to form phrases. The meaning of the new phrase is related to the combined meanings of individual words.

Arbitrariness is absolute, and motivation is relative. There are two reasons for these saying. First is that the elements of a motivated sign themselves are arbitrary. The second reason is that the value of the term is never equal to the total of the values of its sections. There exists no language in which nothing at all is motivated. To conceive of such a language is an impossibility by definition. Languages always exhibit features of both kinds: intrinsically arbitrary and relatively motivated. But its proportion is differs.

Absolute arbitrariness and relative arbitrariness are two important characteristics of all languages, according to which, two types of language can be classified in the world. One is lexico-logical languages, in which, absence of motivation reaches a maximum. Chinese is an example of lexico-logical language. The other is grammatical languages, in which, absence of motivation decreases. Proto-Indo-European and Sanskrit are prototypical examples for that.

2.4. Non-Arbitrary 2.4.1 Onomatopoeic Symbols Onomatopoeia is defined as “in rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates the sound it is describing, and thus suggests its source object, such as ‘bang’ or ‘click’, or animal such as ‘moo’, ‘oink’, ‘quack’, or ‘meow’” in Wikipedia.

Onomatopoeic symbols are those who imitates the sounds of natures. As we generally say they are the natural cries. The sounds or voices made by the machines, the voices of animals, the sounds in nature; as the sound of river or wind, etc… are onomatopoeic sounds. “Woof-woof –the sound made by dog-, quack (duck), roar (lion), and meow (cat)” are onomatopoeic sounds of animals. Some other examples are:

CLICK

'Click the button and take a picture'.

CRACKLE

'Listen to the fire crackle in the dark' .

RATCHET

'The bar is a ratchet in the machine'.

 It must be noted that onomatopoeia is an item of vocabulary, not merely a noise such as, for example, a cough.

These sounds can differ from language to language. For example, the sound a dog makes is bow-wow (or woof-woof) in English, wau-wau in German, ouah-ouah in French, gaf-gaf in Russian, hav-hav in Hebrew and Turkish, wan-wan in Japanese, guau-guau in Spanish and hau-hau in Finnish.

Although they counted as non-arbitrary signals, Saussure appears to have neglected rigorous linguistic observation because the topic in hand is the language we use in everyday life, a subject which seems so familiar as not to require cautious study. Thus he casually remarks that onomatopoeia is not common and plays a less than central role in linguistic systems.

2.4.2. Iconic Symbols “An icon 'represents its object by virtue of a character which it possesses regardless of whether or not the object exists'. Peirce, summarised in Greenlee, 1973:701”

“A sign is said to be iconic when there is a topological similarity between a signifier and its denotata. Sebeok, 1976:1281”

“Icons are 'those whose relation to their objects is a mere community in some quality'. Peirce, quoted by Sebeok, 1976:128”

Icons are the visual pictures or symbols which directly gives the meaning of a word. They generally give the same meaning all over the world. The traffic signs, maps, and pictures can be given as examples of icons. Other examples are:

Is the iconic version of impaired person. The meaning is same in the world.

Is the iconic of the word ‘rose’. This picture gives the same meaning to everyone in every country.

It is the iconic symbol of ‘man’ and again has the same meaning.

It is the traffic icon which means turn right.

The Chinese logographs can be included in this section as they seem iconic and the meaning can be directly understood without knowing the language itself.

As we can understand from the examples given in these icons, there are a direct relation between the form and the meaning. One can easily understand what it means, even when s/he is in a foreign country the language of which s/he does not know. So it is doubtless that they are non-arbitrary.

2.4.3. Interjections

They are the emotional cries of people. The human beings in the world has the same emotions, pain, surprise, happiness, upset, etc… So logically, the sounds they produce to represent these emotions should be similar. For example; ouch, ah, of, and so on…

The people who believes that the origin of language is these exclamations (bow-wow theory), think that as the language deprived from these interjections, they must be non-arbitrary and has the same meaning in all languages.

They are to sum extent right. The interjections or exclamations are non-arbitrary. Their meanings can be understood without the linguistic knowledge of the source language. They are nearly the same in all languages. However, another point here is that, Saussure, the Swiss linguist of early 1900’s, says that they have a little role in the language and can be omitted when discussing about the feature of arbitrariness.

 There will be some more non-arbitrary symbols like conventions, pantomimes, and gestures. There are obvious examples of what one would call 'conventions', styles of clothes, cookery recipes, matrimonial systems, methods of composing music, but for these one does not need to look very far to find natural bases or natural constraints on the forms they take. The tomahawk chop used by Atlanta Braves fans, for example, seems to imitate the action of chopping, and thus would be the most "natural" way to designate the idea of chopping.

3. Coclusion To sum, the term arbitrariness, seen as one of the main principles of language is the no natural relation between the linguistic form of a word and the meaning of it. In the words of Saussure it is the no direct connection between the signifier and the signified. It is the source of the questions like; Why we call a clock as it? Why the words in each language changes? Why cannot we understand all the things in all languages when seeing or hearing the symbols -words?

However, although Saussure do not accept there are some exceptions which lead a new controversy among the scholars. What are they? They are the onomatopoeic sounds, which are the imitations of nature; they are the iconic sounds, which are the visual pictures of a word or a term; they are the interjections, which are the emotional cries of nature; they are the conventions, which are the aggrement methods used between a group of people; they are the gestures we use nearly always when talking even in telephone conversations, which are the body movements; they are the pantomimes, and so on.

We can include sign languages to the non-arbitrary category as they consists of different symbols which generally can be understood by the people who do not know the system of communication used.

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