Abstract

Languages consistently display sound symbolic effects. In our study we expand size-related sound symbolic research to German and Hungarian, languages with both rounded and unrounded high front vowels as well as/ø/, so that we can separate the effect of lip rounding and vowel backness. Our subjects had to rate artificial words with CVCVCV structure. For analysis we used crossed random effect models in a way that is novel in this field. Results confirm previous findings: voiced consonants and back vowels are perceived to be larger. Additionally, we show that lip rounding increases size.

Highlights

  • IntroductionKöhler's study revealed very high rates of correspondence between maluma and round, and takete and spiky forms, while in Sapir's study, words that included/a/were paired with large objects and words that included/i/were usually assigned to small objects by the participants

  • To exploit the usage of mixed-effect models, we aimed at interpreting model parameters which have large interpretive power, like intra-class correlation or proportional change in variance. As these measures are rarely mentioned in the size symbolism literature, we introduce them in more detail below

  • The value of ICCSt is large (0.10 in Hungary, 0.28 in Germany) and it is much larger than the value of ICCSu (0.02 in both countries)

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Summary

Introduction

Köhler's study revealed very high rates of correspondence between maluma and round, and takete and spiky forms, while in Sapir's study, words that included/a/were paired with large objects and words that included/i/were usually assigned to small objects by the participants. Ever since these first well-known experiments, the number of studies and research aspects on sound symbolism have been increasing, and more and more research areas and scientific disciplines focus on sound symbolism (cf Hinton et al, 1994; Westbury et al, 2018).

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