Directionality of linguistic synesthesia in Mandarin: A corpus-based study

Linguistic Synaesthesia in Turkish: A Corpus-Based Study of Cross-Modal Directionality

“…Results, overall, suggest that Turkish linguistic synaesthesia does not support the universality claim (Williams, 1976) of the directionality principle (Ullmann, 1957), which submits that cross-modal transfers in linguistic synaesthesia follow the hierarchy between senses (i.e., from lower to higher senses) with only unidirectional transfers. Generally speaking, findings in the present work are in line with the recent studies investigating synaesthesia in English (Strik Lievers, 2015), Italian (Strik Lievers, 2015), Mandarin Chinese (Zhao et al, 2019) and Korean (Jo, 2019), which argue that the directionality principle cannot be interpreted as a strictly rule-based constraint. On the other hand, predominant source (i.e., touch) and predominant target domains (i.e., hearing) in the current study not only comply with more recent studies but also support data from Ullmann (1957).…”

“…No previous research to our knowledge has shown directionality in Turkish linguistic synaesthesia. We screened a large corpus with 50 million word tokens and extracted 5699 synaesthetic instances, which is comparable to Zhao et al (2019) and considerably larger than the previous studies (e.g., Jo, 2019;Shen & Cohen, 1998;Shen & Gil, 2008;Strik Lievers, 2015;Ullmann, 1957). Such a large sample allowed for a comprehensive and a rigorous examination of linguistic synaesthesia in Turkish that is not limited to a genre, domain, register or period and thus, to test the universality claim of the directionality principle.…”

Linguistic Synesthesia in Korean: Universality and Variation

“…Combining the Sejong Corpus and gustatory adjective synesthesia of this study together, linguistic synesthesia in Korean shows clear language-bound variations of mapping directionality, different from the results of Indo-European languages, such as English and Mandarin Chinese (e.g., Ullmann, 1957; Williams, 1976; Zhao et al, 2019). Korean synesthesia also exhibits certain variations for different datasets in Korean (see Figures 3 and 5).…”

“…However, compared with Zhao et al (2019), Korean synesthesia still has obvious language-specific variation for synesthetic directionality, where Korean Sejong Corpus synesthesia displays reciprocal synesthetic transfers between smell and sound, while Chinese synesthesia does not transfer between the two senses. Based on Korean synesthetic data, this study supports Zhao et al’s (2019) claim that linguistic synesthesia transfers involve different types, both rule-based and frequency-based. Moreover, the results of this study also support the embodiment hypothesis regarding the transfer mechanism of linguistic synesthesia in terms of language-bound variation.…”

“…In particular, Zhao et al’s (2019) study reported that their corpus-assisted observation of linguistic synesthesia in Mandarin showed three different kinds of directionalities: (1) rule-based unidirectionality in which reverse transfers were not found, such as the relationship between touch and sound; (2) the frequency-based biased directionality in which two-way transfers between sensory domains were attested but displayed an unequal distribution of the two directions, such as the interrelation between touch and sight; and (3) the bidirectionality where there were no directional preferences between senses, such as the interaction between touch and taste. Zhao et al (2019) conclusively asserted that “Thus, the directionality of linguistic synesthesia cannot be interpreted as rule-based or frequency-based exclusively. In addition, this study finds that linguistic synesthesia shows language-specific variations for directionality tendencies [.…”