Sounds of contrast: an empirical approach to phonemic iconicity

Abstract

A strong intuition that phonemic qualities suggest meaning has motivated discussions of the sound of language since the time of Plato. However, studies of phonetic symbolism this century have been inconclusive: while systematic contrasts of meaning have often been found, these are not necessarily due to innate phonetic meanings. An alternative approach is presented based on a theory of phonemic iconicity, which suggests that phonemic patterns systematically support the presence of contrasts in meaning. A method for measuring phonemic distributions is outlined. Contrasts in vowel and consonant frequencies are shown to underlie not only differences between word groups, where phonemic contrasts can be expected, but also important differences in several literary texts. The method is tested empirically with data provided by readers of a short story. Here, phonemic contrats were found to contribute to variations in reading speed and readers' ratings of story segments, suggesting that readers were sensitive to variations in tonal patterns while reading the story.