Abstract
A growing body of literature has shown that one perceptual modality can be systematically associated with sensation in another. However, the cross-modal relationship between linguistic sounds and motions (i.e., motion-sound symbolism) is an extremely understudied area of research. Against this background, this paper examines the cross-modal correspondences between categories of consonants on one hand and different acceleration profiles of motion stimuli on the other. In the two experiments that we conducted, we mechanically manipulated the acceleration profiles of the stimuli while holding the trajectory paths constant, thus distinguishing the effect of acceleration profiles from that of motion path shapes. The results show that different acceleration profiles can be associated with different types of consonants; in particular, movements with acceleration and deceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called obstruents, whereas movements without much acceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called sonorants. Moreover, the current experiments show that this sort of cross-modal correspondence arises even when the stimuli are not presented visually, namely, when the participants’ hands were moved passively by a manipulandum. In conclusion, the present study adds an additional piece of evidence demonstrating that bodily action-based information, i.e., proprioception as a very feasible candidate, could lead to sound symbolic patterns.
Highlights
We have recently witnessed a tremendous increase of interest in studies of cross-modal perception, in which sensation in one modality is systematically associated with sensation in another (e.g., Spence, 2011)
The results show that motions with clear acceleration and deceleration tend to be associated with obstruents, whereas motions that do not involve such abrupt changes in speed are likely to be associated with sonorants
How did certain consonants come to be associated with particular kinematic features of motion stimuli independent of the shape of the motion path? Sidhu and Pexman (2017) suggested five possible mechanisms for sound symbolism: (a) phonetic/phonological features statistically co-occurring with stimuli in the environment, (b) shared properties among phonetic features and stimuli, (c) overlapping neural processes, (d) associations developed through the evolutional process, and (e) language-specific patterns
Summary
We have recently witnessed a tremendous increase of interest in studies of cross-modal perception, in which sensation in one modality is systematically associated with sensation in another (e.g., Spence, 2011) Particular cases of such cross-modal perception involving linguistic sounds have been extensively studied under the general rubric of “sound symbolism,” in which some linguistic sounds are associated with certain meanings and images, such as size, shape, color, hardness, and Motion Acceleration and Linguistic Sound weight (Jesperson, 1922; Sapir, 1929; Hinton et al, 1994; Nuckolls, 1999; Berlin, 2006; Akita, 2015; Dingemanse et al, 2015; Lockwood and Dingemanse, 2015). The sound symbolic associations may instantiate embodied motivation in human languages, one of the fundamental tenets of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999; Lakoff, 1987). There is a rise of interest in studies of sound symbolism among linguists, especially cognitive linguists (e.g., Akita, 2009)
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