Linguistic Synaesthesia of Mandarin Sensory Adjectives: Corpus-Based and Experimental Approaches

Abstract

This study examines linguistic synaesthesia based on both the corpus distribution and the modality rating of Mandarin synaesthetic adjectives. We find that the tendencies attested through the corpus-based and the experimental approaches are compatible, including: (1) the modality exclusivity is negatively correlated with the usage of Mandarin sensory adjectives in linguistic synaesthesia; and (2) the ratings on sensory modalities of Mandarin synaesthetic adjectives are consistent with the synaesthetic directionality of these adjectives. The paper thus argues for the cognitive reality of linguistic synaesthesia, which can be evidenced by both the language production in the corpus and the language processing in the behavior experiment.