Sound-Action Symbolism

Abstract

Recent evidence has shown linkages between actions and segmental elements of speech. For instance, close-front vowels are sound symbolically associated with the precision grip, and front vowels are associated with forward-directed limb movements. The current review article presents a variety of such sound-action effects and proposes that they compose a category of sound symbolism that is based on grounding a conceptual knowledge of a referent in articulatory and manual action representations. In addition, the article proposes that even some widely known sound symbolism phenomena such as the sound-magnitude symbolism can be partially based on similar sensorimotor grounding. It is also discussed that meaning of suprasegmental speech elements in many instances is similarly grounded in body actions. Sound symbolism, prosody, and body gestures might originate from the same embodied mechanisms that enable a vivid and iconic expression of a meaning of a referent to the recipient.

Interaction between grasping and articulation: How vowel and consonant pronunciation influences precision and power grip responses

“…The results of this study mostly supported our views that the sound-magnitude effect and the grip-sound effect are based on overlapping mechanisms [ 39 ]. The same vowels and consonants that have been associated with large magnitudes in the sound symbolism literature ([ɑ], [o], [u], [æ], [k], [m] and [l]) also appear to be associated with the power grip responses.…”

“…It has been proposed that many sound-symbolic phenomena can be based on the articulatory and/or acoustic properties of speech sounds [ 37 , 38 ]. We have previously proposed that the grip-sound effect and the sound-magnitude symbolism effect might be–to some degree–based on the same representational mechanisms [ 39 ]. The sound-magnitude symbolism refers to systematic mental associations between specific speech sounds and magnitude concepts [ 40 ].…”

“…Regarding the acoustic origin of the phenomenon [ 53 , 54 ], because small things (e.g., objects and animals) tend to produce relatively high-frequency sounds, speech sounds with higher spectral components − such as [i], which yields relatively high fundamental frequency [ 55 , 56 ] − are associated with small concepts. Regarding our gestural origin of the phenomenon [ 39 ], small concepts and large concepts are associated with certain vowels and consonants because there is functional overlap between representations of articulatory gestures and grasp types. For example, small things are associated with speech sounds that are produced by narrowing a vocal tract, such as [i], or by raising the tongue tip into contact with the alveolar ridge, such as [t], because the same mechanisms that are involved in programming these articulatory gestures are also involved, to some extent, in programming the precision grip (i.e., a grasp type that is used to grasp small things).…”

Neural Basis Of Sound-Symbolic Pseudoword-Shape Correspondences

“…In addition, findings implicating a role of sound symbolism in language structure and function, including the ubiquity of sound-symbolic associations across multiple languages (Blasi et al, 2016), the higher frequency of rounded (pointed) phonemes in words signifying rounded (pointed) objects (Sidhu et al, 2021), the facilitation of word learning by sound symbolism (Nygaard et al, 2009), and the relative advantage for onomatopoeic words in aphasia (Meteyard et al, 2015), lead to the prediction that congruency effects would be found in classical language areas. Finally, brain regions mediating motor control and related somatosensory processing are also candidate loci for congruency effects, given findings suggesting close relationships between articulatory and manual movements (Vainio & Vainio, 2021, 2022, and acoustic similarities between speech and action sounds (Margiotoudi & Pulvermüller, 2020).…”

Cross-modal associations between paintings and sounds: Effects of embodiment

“…Embodied sounds in this study are understood as sounds associated with bodily sensations, bodily movements, and touch. Embodied nature of sound is related to the fact that sounds accompany actions and are processed together ( Vainio & Vainio, 2021 ). Sound characteristics (higher-lower pitch) affect hand movements (upper-lower hand locations; Salgado-Montejo et al., 2016 ).…”