The role of sound symbolism in protolanguage: Some linguistic and archaeological speculations

Cabrera, Juan Carlos Moreno

doi:10.12775/v10235-011-0007-0

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…Westbury, 2005). Sound symbolism may have played a significant role in the origin of human languages and how they have evolved (Blasi, Christiansen, Wichman, & Hammarström, 2014;Cabrera, 2012;Cuskley & Kirby, 2013;Haiman, 2018;Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). Studies on sound symbolism may also shed light on the issue of the place of linguistic knowledge within the larger cognitive system, since sound symbolism may be considered as an instance of a more general cross-modal synesthetic correspondence between multiple modalities (Bankieris & Simner, 2015;Cuskley & Kirby, 2013;Spence, 2011).…”

Section: General Background: Sound Symbolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the nature of cumulativity in sound symbolism: Experimental studies of Pokémonastics with English speakers

Kawahara

Breiss

2021

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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There has been a dramatic rise of interest in sound symbolism, systematic associations between sounds and meanings. Despite this, one aspect that is still markedly under-explored is its cumulative nature, i.e., when there are two or more sounds with the same symbolic meaning, whether these effects add up or not. These questions are important to address, since they bear on the general question of how speakers take into account multiple sources of evidence when they make linguistic decisions. Inspired by an accumulating body of research on cumulativity in other linguistic patterns, two experiments on sound symbolism using Pokémon names were conducted with native speakers of English. The experiments tested two types of cumulativity: counting cumulativity, which holds if the effects of multiple instances of the same factor add up, and ganging-up cumulativity, which holds when the effects of different factors add up. The experiments addressed whether these patterns of cumulativity hold in sound symbolism, and, more importantly, if so, how. We found that (1) three factors can show ganging-up cumulativity, (2) counting cumulativity and ganging-up cumulativity can coexist in a single system, (3) ganging-up cumulativity patterns can plausibly be considered to be linear, and (4) counting cumulativity effects can be sub-linear.

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Section: General Background: Sound Symbolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the nature of cumulativity in sound symbolism: Experimental studies of Pokémonastics with English speakers

Kawahara

Breiss

2021

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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“…A growing body of research has shown, for example, that sound symbolism may guide first and second language acquisition to a non-trivial degree (Nygaard et al, 2009;Imai and Kita, 2014;Asano et al, 2015;Nielsen and Dingemanse, 2020). Some scholars argue that it may have played an essential role in the origin and development of human languages (Cabrera, 2012;Perniss and Vigiliocco, 2014;Perlman and Lupyan, 2018), while others claim that these sound-meaning connections may be a specific instance of more general synesthetic cross-modal perception, in which sensation in one modality can evoke sensation in another modality (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001;Spence, 2011;Cuskley and Kirby, 2013;Bankieris and Simner, 2015). Sound symbolism did not used to be a major topic of exploration in linguistics; however, for the reasons briefly outlined here, it has started receiving intensive attention in linguistics, psychology and neighboring fields (see Nielsen and Dingemanse, 2020 for some quantitative evidence for this research trend).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

English Speakers Can Infer Pokémon Types Based on Sound Symbolism

2021

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Sound symbolism, systematic associations between sounds and meanings, is receiving increasing attention in linguistics, psychology and related disciplines. One general question that is currently explored in this research is what sorts of semantic properties can be symbolically represented. Against this background, within the general research paradigm which explores the nature of sound symbolism using Pokémon names, several recent studies have shown that Japanese speakers associate certain classes of sounds with notions that are as complex as Pokémon types. Specifically, Japanese speakers associate (1) sibilants with the flying type, (2) voiced obstruents with the dark type, and (3) labial consonants with the fairy type. These sound symbolic effects arguably have their roots in the phonetic properties of the sounds at issue, and hence are not expected to be specific to Japanese. The current study thus addressed the question whether these sound symbolic associations hold with native speakers of English. Two experiments show that these sound symbolic patterns were very robustly observed when the stimuli were presented in pairs; when the stimuli were presented in isolation, the effects were also tangible, although not as robust. We conclude that English speakers can associate certain types of sounds with particular Pokémon types, with an important caveat that we observed a clear task effect. Overall the current results lend some credibility to the hypothesis that those attributes that play a role in Pokémons' survival are actively signaled by sound symbolism.

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“…It was also suggested that the process of language acquisition in early childhood involves establishing links between similar entities and relevant iconic sounds or objects [ 9 ]. It is assumed that, eventually, the learned SI words can be generalized and replaced with other, less iconic types of words [ 10 ]. It is also hypothesized that iconicity has played an important role in the origin and evolution of language [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Indicators of Visual Andauditory Recognition of Imitative Words on Different De-Iconization Stages

et al. 2023

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The research aims to reveal neural indicators of recognition for iconic words and the possible cross-modal multisensory integration behind this process. The goals of this research are twofold: (1) to register event-related potentials (ERP) in the brain in the process of visual and auditory recognition of Russian imitative words on different de-iconization stages; and (2) to establish whether differences in the brain activity arise while processing visual and auditory stimuli of different nature. Sound imitative (onomatopoeic, mimetic, and ideophonic) words are words with iconic correlation between form and meaning (iconicity being a relationship of resemblance). Russian adult participants (n = 110) were presented with 15 stimuli both visually and auditorily. The stimuli material was equally distributed into three groups according to the criterion of (historical) iconicity loss: five explicit sound imitative (SI) words, five implicit SI words and five non-SI words. It was established that there was no statistically significant difference between visually presented explicit or implicit SI words and non-SI words respectively. However, statistically significant differences were registered for auditorily presented explicit SI words in contrast to implicit SI words in the N400 ERP component, as well as implicit SI words in contrast to non-SI words in the P300 ERP component. We thoroughly analyzed the integrative brain activity in response to explicit IS words and compared it to that in response to implicit SI and non-SI words presented auditorily. The data yielded by this analysis showed the N400 ERP component was more prominent during the recognition process of the explicit SI words received from the central channels (specifically Cz). We assume that these results indicate a specific brain response associated with directed attention in the process of performing cognitive decision making tasks regarding explicit and implicit SI words presented auditorily. This may reflect a higher level of cognitive complexity in identifying this type of stimuli considering the experimental task challenges that may involve cross-modal integration process.

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The role of sound symbolism in protolanguage: Some linguistic and archaeological speculations

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Exploring the nature of cumulativity in sound symbolism: Experimental studies of Pokémonastics with English speakers

Exploring the nature of cumulativity in sound symbolism: Experimental studies of Pokémonastics with English speakers

English Speakers Can Infer Pokémon Types Based on Sound Symbolism

Neural Indicators of Visual Andauditory Recognition of Imitative Words on Different De-Iconization Stages

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