Sound symbolism in vowels: Vowel quality, duration and pitch in sound-to-size correspondence

Abstract

The study investigates sound symbolism, concentrating on vowel quality, duration, and pitch in sound-to-size correspondences. Thirty-one native speakers of Polish were asked to rate presented stimuli on a 1–7 point scale ranging from “small” to “big”. The stimuli consisted of /CVC/ sequences, with all six non-nasalized Polish vowels, blocked in three groups. In the first group, vowel quality was investigated, with duration and pitch unaltered. In the second group, vowel was manipulated to increase its duration by 50% relative to a baseline condition. In the third group, F0 of a vowel was linearly downshifted by a scaling factor of 0.8. The results revealed that neither vowel quality nor lowered pitch significantly influenced size ratings. Vowel duration, however, yielded significantly different ratings compared to a baseline condition. Longer durational values yielded “bigger” measures relative to normal duration. This result is taken as evidence that vowel duration has a relatively more robust effect on perception of size in Polish compared to vowel quality and pitch.