In his thesis ‘Auditory Information Design‘, Barrass (1998) describes 7 types of approaches to the design of sounds that in particular support information processing activities – syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, perceptual, task-oriented, connotative, and device-oriented.

The syntactic approach focuses on the organization of auditory elements into more complex messages. The semantic approach focuses on the metaphorical meaning of the sound. The pragmatic method focuses on the psychoacoustic discrimination of the sounds. The perceptual method focuses on the significance of the relations between the sounds. The task-oriented method designs the sounds for a particular purpose. The connotative method is concerned with the cultural and aesthetic implications of the sound. The device-oriented method focuses on the transportability of the sounds between different devices, and the optimization of the sounds for a specific device”. (Barrass 1998).

It’s great reading if you are interested in Audio Interfaces.