Abstract
We tested the hypothesis that phonosemantic iconicity––i.e., a motivated resonance of sound and meaning––might not only be found on the level of individual words or entire texts, but also in word combinations such that the meaning of a target word is iconically expressed, or highlighted, in the phonetic properties of its immediate verbal context. To this end, we extracted single lines from German poems that all include a word designating high or low dominance, such as large or small, strong or weak, etc. Based on insights from previous studies, we expected to find more vowels with a relatively short distance between the first two formants (low formant dispersion) in the immediate context of words expressing high physical or social dominance than in the context of words expressing low dominance. Our findings support this hypothesis, suggesting that neighboring words can form iconic dyads in which the meaning of one word is sound-iconically reflected in the phonetic properties of adjacent words. The construct of a contiguity-based phono-semantic iconicity opens many venues for future research well beyond lines extracted from poems.
Highlights
IntroductionWhile traditional linguistics largely keeps endorsing the hypothesis that the linguistic sign is arbitrary regarding the relation of the signifier (i.e., sound or written characters) and the signified (i.e., meaning) [1], evidence for non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations in the use of language is growing (for reviews see [2,3,4,5,6])
While traditional linguistics largely keeps endorsing the hypothesis that the linguistic sign is arbitrary regarding the relation of the signifier and the signified [1], evidence for non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations in the use of language is growing
As we found the difference between the semantic categories to be most pronounced for formant dispersion, we subsequently conducted a logistic regression to test the predictive power of formant dispersion for the categorization of the target words as either SMALL or LARGE
Summary
While traditional linguistics largely keeps endorsing the hypothesis that the linguistic sign is arbitrary regarding the relation of the signifier (i.e., sound or written characters) and the signified (i.e., meaning) [1], evidence for non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations in the use of language is growing (for reviews see [2,3,4,5,6]). The aim of the present study is to introduce a hitherto unconsidered variant of sound-meaning relations in natural language texts. In this variant, we predict sound-iconic relations between the meaning of a given word and the sound patterns of its immediately neighboring words. We expect that the sound of adjacent words is phonetically an iconic simile for the meaning of a given reference word. We will refer to this kind of phonosemantic relations between adjacent words as contiguity-based sound iconicity
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