Form-meaning Relationships Research Articles

Statistical relationships between surface form and sensory meanings of English words influence lexical processing.

Across spoken languages, there are some words whose acoustic features resemble the meanings of their referents by evoking perceptual imagery, i.e., they are iconic (e.g., in English, "splash" imitates the sound of an object hitting water). While these sound symbolic form-meaning relationships are well-studied, relatively little work has explored whether the sensory properties of English words also involve systematic (i.e., statistical) form-meaning mappings. We first test the prediction that surface form properties can predict sensory experience ratings for over 5,000 monosyllabic and disyllabic words (Juhasz & Yap, 2013), confirming they explain a significant proportion of variance. Next, we show that iconicity and sensory form typicality, a statistical measure of how well a word's form aligns with its sensory experience rating, are only weakly related to each other, indicating they are likely to be distinct constructs. To determine whether form typicality influences processing of sensory words, we conducted regression analyses using lexical decision, word recognition, naming and semantic decision tasks from behavioral megastudy data sets. Across the data sets, sensory form typicality was able to predict more variance in performance than sensory experience or iconicity ratings. Further, the effects of typicality were consistently inhibitory in comprehension (i.e., more typical forms were responded to more slowly and less accurately), whereas for production the effect was facilitatory. These findings are the first evidence that systematic form-meaning mappings in English sensory words influence their processing. We discuss how language processing models incorporating Bayesian prediction mechanisms might be able to account for form typicality in the lexicon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

More Than Words: An Integrated Framework for Exploring Gestures’ Role in Bilinguals’ Use of Two Languages for Making Mathematical Meaning

Gestures play a role in perception, production, and comprehension of language and have been shown to differ cross-linguistically and cross-culturally in aspects of performance and form-meaning relationships. Furthermore, gestures can serve as analytical tools to access tacit embodied-imagistic mathematical meanings that add to verbal-linguistic dimensions of meaning. At the same time, language plays important roles in interaction and cognition, influencing bilinguals’ learning of mathematics. Still, there is only very little research attending to the use of gestures of multilinguals as means to better understand the relationships between their language use and their mathematical thinking. This paper builds on research on multilingualism and on gestures—related and unrelated to mathematics education—to motivate and develop a framework for understanding better mathematics thinking and learning of multilinguals through integrating gesture analysis as related to languages, culture, and the use of registers. The application of this framework will be illustrated through two case studies in which we analyse interview data of a bilingual student and a bilingual mathematics teacher—focusing on gestures and language use while talking about the mathematical concept of ‘power’—or exponents—in Farsi (Persian) and in English. From analyzing the gestures’ form-meaning relations and their functions as related to hybrid language practices, we hypothesize on the vernacular and mathematical context as activated in both speech and gesture and on how it relates to mathematical meaning. From this, we draw practical implications for multilingual mathematical learning contexts and discuss implications for research on multilinguals’ mathematical thinking and learning.

Identifying the Correlations Between the Semantics and the Phonology of American Sign Language and British Sign Language: A Vector Space Approach.

Over the history of research on sign languages, much scholarship has highlighted the pervasive presence of signs whose forms relate to their meaning in a non-arbitrary way. The presence of these forms suggests that sign language vocabularies are shaped, at least in part, by a pressure toward maintaining a link between form and meaning in wordforms. We use a vector space approach to test the ways this pressure might shape sign language vocabularies, examining how non-arbitrary forms are distributed within the lexicons of two unrelated sign languages. Vector space models situate the representations of words in a multi-dimensional space where the distance between words indexes their relatedness in meaning. Using phonological information from the vocabularies of American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), we tested whether increased similarity between the semantic representations of signs corresponds to increased phonological similarity. The results of the computational analysis showed a significant positive relationship between phonological form and semantic meaning for both sign languages, which was strongest when the sign language lexicons were organized into clusters of semantically related signs. The analysis also revealed variation in the strength of patterns across the form-meaning relationships seen between phonological parameters within each sign language, as well as between the two languages. This shows that while the connection between form and meaning is not entirely language specific, there are cross-linguistic differences in how these mappings are realized for signs in each language, suggesting that arbitrariness as well as cognitive or cultural influences may play a role in how these patterns are realized. The results of this analysis not only contribute to our understanding of the distribution of non-arbitrariness in sign language lexicons, but also demonstrate a new way that computational modeling can be harnessed in lexicon-wide investigations of sign languages.

Effects of oral corrective feedback on the development of complex morphosyntax

This exploratory study examined the relationship between corrective feedback (CF) and linguistic target complexity. In a pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test design, 44 adult intermediate L2 Italian learners from different L1 backgrounds were assigned to a didactic recast, a prompt and a no-feedback group. They were compared on oral and written measures on the development of passato prossimo, an Italian compound past form characterised by a set of complex semantic and morphosyntactic rules and participles displaying different degrees of form-meaning transparency. Mixed-effects models elucidated the extent to which feedback frequency predicted accuracy, whilst controlling for the effect of individual difference covariates and random variation. Only the frequency of didactic recasts predicted development of full passato prossimo sentences, whereas both feedback types were significantly related to participle development, a single aspect of the construction. Furthermore, only prompt frequency was positively related to accuracy in participles displaying more transparent (less complex) form-meaning relationships.

“I use it when I see it”: The role of development and experience in Deaf and hearing children’s understanding of iconic gesture

Iconicity is prevalent in gesture and in sign languages, yet the degree to which children recognize and leverage iconicity for early language learning is unclear. In Experiment 1 of the current study, we presented sign-naïve 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds (n=87) with iconic shape gestures and no additional scaffolding to ask whether children can spontaneously map iconic gestures to their referents. Four- and five-year-olds, but not three-year-olds, recognized the referents of iconic shape gestures above chance. Experiment 2 asked whether preschoolers (n=93) show an advantage in fast-mapping iconic gestures compared to arbitrary ones. We found that iconicity played a significant role in supporting 4- and 5-year-olds’ ability to learn new gestures presented in an explicit pedagogical context, and a lesser role in 3-year-olds’ learning. Using similar tasks in Experiment 3, we found that Deaf preschoolers (n=41) exposed to American Sign Language showed a similar pattern of recognition and learning but starting at an earlier age, suggesting that learning a language with rich iconicity may lead to earlier use of iconicity. These results suggest that sensitivity to iconicity is shaped by experience, and while not fundamental to the earliest stages of language development, is a useful tool once children unlock these form-meaning relationships.

Location, Location, Location

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between sign structure and iconicity in American Sign Language. Historically, linguists have been pressured to downplay the role of form-meaning relationships (iconicity) in signed languages. However, recent inquiries into the role of traditional phonological parameters of signs (handshape, location, and movement) in the development of metaphor, event telicity, and c-selection have invited a reanalysis of the role of iconicity in signed language structure. We present an analysis of the distribution of handshape, location, and movement parameters in signs and examine which of these parameters are most often used to encode iconic properties. We examine both iconic and visual-metaphorical relationships to the referents of 767 signs of American Sign Language. The findings suggest that body location is salient in conveying iconic information both for signs with concrete referents (iconic) and for signs with abstract referents (visual-metaphorical). We discuss the implications of these findings for structural and processing models of naturally occurring signed languages.

Modality exclusivity norms for 400 nouns: The relationship between perceptual experience and surface word form

We present modality exclusivity norms for 400 randomly selected noun concepts, for which participants provided perceptual strength ratings across five sensory modalities (i.e., hearing, taste, touch, smell, and vision). A comparison with previous norms showed that noun concepts are more multimodal than adjective concepts, as nouns tend to subsume multiple adjectival property concepts (e.g., perceptual experience of the concept baby involves auditory, haptic, olfactory, and visual properties, and hence leads to multimodal perceptual strength). To show the value of these norms, we then used them to test a prediction of the sound symbolism hypothesis: Analysis revealed a systematic relationship between strength of perceptual experience in the referent concept and surface word form, such that distinctive perceptual experience tends to attract distinctive lexical labels. In other words, modality-specific norms of perceptual strength are useful for exploring not just the nature of grounded concepts, but also the nature of form-meaning relationships. These norms will be of benefit to those interested in the representational nature of concepts, the roles of perceptual information in word processing and in grounded cognition more generally, and the relationship between form and meaning in language development and evolution.

Collective nouns, aggregate nouns, and superordinates

‘Part of’ and ‘kind of’ relations in the lexicon have been matter of some linguistic research, but strangely enough, they have only rarely been investigated together. Strangely, since ‘part of’ and ‘kind of’ appear to be similar in a number of respects, and since nouns such as furniture or bétail combine both ‘part of’ and ‘kind of’ readings. As a consequence, linguistic terminology in this specific domain has been lacking in uniformity and transparency. This article aims to bring terminological clarity: it offers a rough survey of the entire ‘part of/kind of’ spectrum and pleads for an unambiguous linguistic metalanguage that distinguishes between collective nouns (e.g. team), aggregate nouns (e.g. furniture), and superordinates (e.g. vehicle). Arguments for the terminological distinctions proposed can be found in a thorough investigation of lexical form-meaning relationships.

Filling In the Missing Piece in Research on Lexicalization Patterns

For more than a decade, studies on second language (L2) lexicalization patterns of motion events have examined crosslinguistic differences in encoding semantic elements (e.g., motions, paths, manners) into surface forms (e.g., verbs, prepositions, adverbial clauses). Ultimately, these studies examine the transferability of the L1 form-meaning relationships to interlangauge (IL), claiming that there is an underlying influence of first language (L1) based cognition on L2 acquisition (for a review of previous studies, see Slobin, 2004). This claim of L1 cognitive influence arose from the perspective of linguistic relativity, specifically from Slobin’s (1996) thinking for speaking hypothesis, which asserts that linguistic demands influence how speakers conceptualize motion events.

LANGUAGES IN CONTACT: THE PARTIAL RESTRUCTURING OF VERNACULARS, John Holm

LANGUAGES IN CONTACT: THE PARTIAL RESTRUCTURING OF VERNACULARS. John Holm. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 175. $65.00 cloth.Second language acquisition scholars have long looked to pidgin and creole studies for insights into the nature of interlanguage. For example, Andersen (1983) discussed the psychological processes of pidginization and creolization. Pidginization is SLA under conditions of severely restricted input and results in a variety (an incipient pidgin language or the beginning stages of an interlanguage) with a small set of lexical items, analytic and highly variable syntax, and minimal stylistic alternatives. Creolization is first language acquisition where a pidgin language serves as the input. In these circumstances, children create new form-meaning relationships that are not present in the pidgin, relying on the innate language-making capacity that Bickerton (1984) called the bioprogram. Thus, a creole language is a fully complex language that involves a radical restructuring of the lexifier language. Andersen (1983) coined the term nativization to include both processes, which, he noted, represent movement toward an internal norm. When pidgin and creole speakers come into greater contact with speakers of the superstrate, input is increased and the contact varieties are restructured in the direction of the standard language, a process Andersen called denativization.

Advanced grammars and pragmatic processes

This study starts by testing the assumption that with access to the full range of properties of the language faculty, L2 learners are ultimately successful in assigning target-like meanings to overt forms. A further assumption that can be (implicitly) drawn from this assumption is that L2 pragmatic processes are native-like at Logical Form (in Relevance-theoretic terms, Sperber and Wilson 1986/95). The study focuses on the L2 acquisition of the distributional and interpretational properties of the English present simple (e.g. I cycle to work) and the English present progressive (e.g. I’m cycling to work). Data from advanced L1 French speakers, under varying task conditions, are presented to evaluate these assumptions. In light of any evidence indicating persistent form-meaning mismatches, the results are used to (i) discuss a permanent syntactic deficit as the possible source of difficulty in acquiring target-like form-meaning relationships and (ii) consider the potential implications for pragmatic processes resulting from this deficit.