This meaning is different from the referent , which is what we normally think of as the meaning of a word. Reference is a separate process from sound-meaning, and is layered on top of it. Reference is less central to word semantics than sound-meaning, although it is much more obvious to the casual observer. This aspect of meaning which is determined by sound lies much closer to what we call the connotation than the denotation. Sound meaning does tend to predispose referents, but does not largely determine them.
Sound affects meaning in every word in every language.
However, because of the way reference interacts with sound-meaning, its effect is not as obvious at first glance in concrete nouns and other words with very inflexible referents. What all the various referents or senses of a word have in common is their sound-meaning. Thus by virtue of its sound, the 'get' in 'get up' is the very same word to the English-speaking ear as the 'get' in 'get away', 'get involved', 'get through', 'get fat', 'get a Lamborghini'. All of this can be and has been verified empirically by simply cataloguing the relationship between sound and referent and taking statistics. My Dictionary I think it's the longest list of phonesthemes available anywhere and the first commercial dictionary of phonesthemes.