Visualization of relation between sound symbolic word and perceptual characteristics of environmental sounds

Abstract

Humans interact with environmental sounds by easily and quickly identifying external and natural sounds in daily life. Interestingly, we verbalize the perceived auditory information from environmental sound. Onomatopoeia, i.e. sound symbolic word, indicates the linguistic form deeply related to environmental sound. The objective of this study is to visualize the relationship between perceptual properties of onomatopoeia and affective characteristics (“pleasant - unpleasant”) perceived from the environmental sound. We have mapped the correlation between perceptual properties by phonemes of onomatopoeia and “pleasant/unpleasant” evaluations of environmental sound. The results showed that many onomatopoeias are related to various perceptual and affective scales. We suggest the importance of relation between the perceptual characteristics in auditory sensation and the phonological properties of sound symbolic words.