Abstract
AbstractAncient writers, including Socrates and the Upanishads, argued that sibilants are associated with the notions of wind, air and sky. From modern perspectives, these statements can be understood as an assertion about sound symbolism, i.e., systematic connections between sounds and meanings. Inspired by these writers, this article reports on an experiment that tests a sound symbolic value of sibilants. The experiment is a case study situated within the Pokémonastics research paradigm, in which the researchers explore the sound symbolic patterns in natural languages using Pokémon names. The current experiment shows that when presented with pairs of a flying-type Pokémon character and a normal-type Pokémon character, Japanese speakers are more likely to associate the flying-type Pokémons with names that contain sibilants than those names that do not contain sibilants. As was pointed out by Socrates, the sound symbolic connection identified in the experiment is likely to be grounded in the articulatory properties of sibilants – the large amount of oral airflow that accompanies the production of sibilants. Various implications of the current experiment for the sound symbolism research are discussed throughout the article.
Highlights
Socrates in Cratylus suggests that [s] (=σ) and [z] (=ζ) are suited for words that represent wind and vibration, because the production of these sounds accompanies strong breath (427)
This result is likely to be due to the sound symbolic association between sibilants and the notion of flying, an association that is very similar to what Socrates and the Upanishads identified in their writings
Shinohara and Kawahara (2016) found that given nonce words, Korean speakers judge nonce words with high vowels to be smaller than those with low vowels, contrary to what we would expect from the lexical patterns. As with these cases, the current experiment adds a new instance of sound symbolism that emerges in an experimental setting without overt evidence in the lexicon. Another question that arises is whether showing the sound symbolic connection we identified in the current experiment requires exposure to the existing Pokémon names, or whether the participants know the sound symbolic connection between sibilants and the notion flying, independently of the exposure to Pokémon
Summary
Socrates in Cratylus suggests that [s] (=σ) and [z] (=ζ) are suited for words that represent wind and vibration, because the production of these sounds accompanies strong breath (427). The mute consonants represent fire, the sibilants air, the vowels the sun” (Aitareya Aranyaka III.2.6.2., emphasis ours).. The mute consonants represent fire, the sibilants air, the vowels the sun” (Aitareya Aranyaka III.2.6.2., emphasis ours).1 These statements by the ancient writers concern what we call “sound symbolism,” in which certain sounds directly represent certain meanings. The commonly held dictum in modern linguistic theories in the twentieth century, which is often attributed to Saussure (1916), is that the relationships between sounds and meanings are fundamentally arbitrary. As these ancient writers had already noticed, systematic relationships between sounds and meanings occur in some environments. Nonce words containing the low back vowel [ɑ] are often judged to be larger than nonce words containing the high front vowel [i] by speakers of many
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