Phonetic symbolism in an artificial language.

Johnson, Ronald C.; Suzuki, Nancy S.; Olds, William K.

doi:10.1037/h0043851

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…As discussed earlier, most of the experimental evidence of phonosemantic behavior comes from comprehension tasks that used spoken or written words, or production tasks based on written naming. The few studies that used these materials in deaf (Johnson et al 1964) or aphasic (Ammon et al 1977) individuals have failed to show sound symbolic associations. However, these null results can readily be accounted by specific difficulties of these populations with linguistic materials.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of sound symbolism in simple vocalizations

Parise

Pavani

2011

Exp Brain Res

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The question of the arbitrariness of language is among the oldest in cognitive sciences, and it relates to the nature of the associations between vocal sounds and their meaning. Growing evidence seems to support sound symbolism, claiming for a naturally constrained mapping of meaning into sounds. Most of such evidence, however, comes from studies based on the interpretation of pseudowords, and to date, there is little empirical evidence that sound symbolism can affect phonatory behavior. In the present study, we asked participants to utter the letter /a/ in response to visual stimuli varying in shape, luminance, and size, and we observed consistent sound symbolic effects on vocalizations. Utterances' loudness was modulated by stimulus shape and luminance. Moreover, stimulus shape consistently modulated the frequency of the third formant (F3). This finding reveals an automatic mapping of specific visual attributes into phonological features of vocalizations. Furthermore, it suggests that sound-meaning associations are reciprocal, affecting active (production) as well as passive (comprehension) linguistic behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of sound symbolism in simple vocalizations

Parise

Pavani

2011

Exp Brain Res

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“…As just one example, using the mil versus mal example from Sapir (1929), perceptions of size might be the result of a kinesthetic cue (open vs. pursed lips during articulation) or the appearance of the manipulated vowels (a fat a vs. a thin i). It was not until experiments showing that the phonetic symbolism effects held for hearing but not deaf participants (who had been taught to speak) that these alternative explanations were addressed (Johnson, Suzuki, and Olds 1964).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic Symbolism and Brand Name Preference

Lowrey¹,

Shrum²

2007

J Consum Res

232

191

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Two experiments investigated the effects of phonetic symbolism on brand name preference. Participants indicated preference for fictitious brand names for particular products (or for products with particular attributes) from word pairs that differed only on vowel sound (e.g., front vs. back vowels, or vowel sounds associated with positive vs. negative concepts). Participants preferred brand names more when the attributes connoted by the vowel sounds (e.g., small, sharp) were positive for a product category (e.g., convertible, knife), but they preferred the same names less when the attributes connoted were negative for a product category (e.g., sport utility vehicle, hammer). However, words with negative vowel sounds were least preferred regardless of product category or attribute. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

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“…Eberhardt's (1940) discovery of sound symbolism in profoundly deaf individuals suggested that articulatory features in isolation can contribute to sound symbolism (though admittedly in a specific population; cf. Johnson, Suzuki & Olds, 1964).…”

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Five mechanisms of sound symbolic association

2017

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Sound symbolism refers to an association between phonemes and stimuli containing particular perceptual and/or semantic elements (e.g., objects of a certain size or shape). Some of the best-known examples include the mil/mal effect (Sapir, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 225-239, 1929) and the maluma/takete effect (Köhler, 1929). Interest in this topic has been on the rise within psychology, and studies have demonstrated that sound symbolic effects are relevant for many facets of cognition, including language, action, memory, and categorization. Sound symbolism also provides a mechanism by which words' forms can have nonarbitrary, iconic relationships with their meanings. Although various proposals have been put forth for how phonetic features (both acoustic and articulatory) come to be associated with stimuli, there is as yet no generally agreed-upon explanation. We review five proposals: statistical co-occurrence between phonetic features and associated stimuli in the environment, a shared property among phonetic features and stimuli; neural factors; species-general, evolved associations; and patterns extracted from language. We identify a number of outstanding questions that need to be addressed on this topic and suggest next steps for the field.

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Phonetic symbolism in an artificial language.

Cited by 18 publications

References 6 publications

Evidence of sound symbolism in simple vocalizations

Evidence of sound symbolism in simple vocalizations

Phonetic Symbolism and Brand Name Preference

Five mechanisms of sound symbolic association

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