Abstract
Phonetic symbolism has been believed to be caused by language habits which make a speech sound, through association with the connotation of the words in which it occurs, take on that connotation. Fifty Japanese subjects heard 32 pairs of CVC nonsense syllables with [1]-[r], [b]-[v], and [s]-[θ] at the initial position and they were asked to judge which one of each pair would sound darker, heavier, and sharper. Significantly different connotations were observed between the paired speech sounds even though they were regarded as allophones in the same phonemes. The results tend to suggest that phonetic symbolism can not be caused only by language habits but also by tonal properties of speech sounds.
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