Abstract
The present study retested previously reported empirical evidence suggesting an iconic relation between sound and emotional meaning in poetry. To this end, we analyzed the frequency of certain phoneme classes in 48 German poems and correlated them with ratings for emotional classification. Our analyses provide evidence for a link between the emotional classification of poems (joyful vs. sad) and the perception of tonal contrast as reflected in the attribution of phenomenological sound qualia (bright vs. dark). However, we could not confirm any of the previous hypotheses and findings regarding either a connection between the frequencies of occurrence of specific vowel classes and the perception of tonal contrast, or a relation between the frequencies of occurrence of consonant classes and emotional classification.
Highlights
A potentially non-arbitrary, “natural”, or “iconic” relation between sound and meaning in language has been a controversial topic since Greek antiquity (Plato, 1892; for a detailed historical overview, see Genette, 1995; on the principle of the arbitrariness of signs, see De Saussure, 1916/1983)
Recentlinguistic studies have suggested that phonological iconicity is a property of languages that should be acknowledged as an important addition to the principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign (Perniss et al, 2010; Myers-Schulz et al, 2013; Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014; for an overview see Hinton et al, 2006; Schmidtke et al, 2014)
Our results provide evidence for a link between the emotional classification of poems and the phenomenological perception of bright vs. dark sound qualia
Summary
A potentially non-arbitrary, “natural” (gr. physei), or “iconic” relation between sound and meaning in language has been a controversial topic since Greek antiquity (Plato, 1892; for a detailed historical overview, see Genette, 1995; on the principle of the arbitrariness of signs, see De Saussure, 1916/1983). Physei), or “iconic” relation between sound and meaning in language has been a controversial topic since Greek antiquity (Plato, 1892; for a detailed historical overview, see Genette, 1995; on the principle of the arbitrariness of signs, see De Saussure, 1916/1983). Recent (psycho-)linguistic studies have suggested that phonological iconicity is a property of languages that should be acknowledged as an important addition to the principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign (Perniss et al, 2010; Myers-Schulz et al, 2013; Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014; for an overview see Hinton et al, 2006; Schmidtke et al, 2014). Poetry has often served as a testing ground for the hypothesis of an “inmost, natural similarity association between sound and meaning”
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