ArmMelt. Sound symbolism. In linguistics, sound symbolism, phonesthesia or phonosemantics is the idea that vocal sounds or phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves. Origin[edit] In the 18th century, Mikhail Lomonosov propagated a theory that words containing certain sounds should bear certain meanings; for instance, the front vowel sounds E, I, YU should be used when depicting tender subjects and those with back vowel sounds O, U, Y when describing things that may cause fear ("like anger, envy, pain, and sorrow").[1] Saussure himself is said to have collected examples where sounds and referents were related.
Ancient traditions link sounds and meaning, and some modern linguistic research does also. Types of sound symbolism[edit] Margaret Magnus is the author of a comprehensive book designed to explain phonosemantics to the lay reader: Gods of the Word. Onomatopoeia[edit] This is the least significant type of symbolism. Clustering[edit] Words that share a sound sometimes have something in common. Iconism[edit] Unexplained Mysteries - Paranormal Phenomena and the World's Greatest Unexplained Mysteries. STEPHEN FRY: WHAT I WISH I'D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 18. Technological singularity. The technological singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing civilization in an event called the singularity.[1] Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable.[2] The first use of the term "singularity" in this context was by mathematician John von Neumann.
Proponents of the singularity typically postulate an "intelligence explosion",[5][6] where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, that might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human. Basic concepts Superintelligence Non-AI singularity Intelligence explosion Exponential growth Plausibility.