Non-arbitrary Relationship Research Articles

Sound symbolic associations: evidence from visual, tactile, and interpersonal iconic perception of Mandarin rimes

Sound symbolism refers to the non-arbitrary relationship between phonemes and specific perceptual attributes. Few studies have focused on the sound symbolic associations between Mandarin phonemes and multiple perceptual dimensions, including social attitudes. The main purpose of the current study is to identify the acoustic cues crucial to perceptual judgment on the visual, tactile, and interpersonal dimensions based on the Mandarin rimes. The study found that in addition to the first and second formants, formant transitions and nasal codas were crucial in characterizing sound symbolic associations. Machine learning models also showed that critical acoustic parameters could successfully classify the different perceived attributes of rimes. The study further examined the mechanisms underlying forming a sound symbolic association. Through mediation analyses, the light/heavy dimension proved to have a suppression effect on the politeness and friendliness perception of Mandarin compound rimes (diphthongs and diphthongs with nasal codas /n/ or /ŋ/). This finding suggested that the two potential mechanisms of sound symbolism (i.e., language pattern account and shared-property account) could coexist and interact with each other.

Sound symbolic associations in Spanish emotional words: affective dimensions and discrete emotions

ABSTRACT Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words.

Impact Of Poetic Style For Pronunciation: A Systematic Literature Review

Linguistics' field of pronunciation studies how words are pronounced and their intended meanings, arrangement, and classification of sounds as linguistic components. Then pronunciation is often associated in the pronunciation of a poem. It started with an oral tradition because previously poetry was made to be performed. Focusing on the phonemic inventory of poetry, several studies have found a non-arbitrary relationship between the frequency of occurrence of certain phoneme classes and the "emotional meaning", or emotional connotation of certain phonemes and their influence on the perception of the emotional tone of poetry. This research is classified as a collective enterprise and non-experimental descriptive research. PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) was used in this study to collect data as part of the Systematic Literature Review (SLR). There were 113 data collected from various accredited and Scopus indexed sources such as Elsevier were mobilized to search the data. There are several papers that eliminated by problem topic, publication criteria, and the main outcome, namely the relationship between poetry and pronunciation in writing, 1 journal left. The main key keyword is also obtained, namely "additional language-learner". Then to determine the influence of poetic style on pronunciation, the author identified it through the use of rhyme and rhythm as well as physical engagement, this technology was able to capture "micro-moments" of peer-to-peer learning, illustrating how these techniques might be used to successfully engage students whose first language was not being used in the classroom.

Delay and Speed of Visual Feedback of a Keystroke Cause Illusory Heaviness and Stiffness.

Imposing a delay between an action (e.g., a limb movement) and its related visual feedback (e.g., a cursor movement on the display) induces a peculiar sensation of heaviness or stiffness. Earlier studies have examined this delay-induced heaviness or stiffness sensation in relation to the non-arbitrary causal relationship between an action and its effect. Here, “non-arbitrary causal relationship” means that an action produces a specific and deterministic pattern of visual feedback; for example, a leftward limb movement consistently and deterministically causes a leftward visual motion. In modern graphical user interfaces, on the other hand, users often control visual information by pressing keys, wherein the relationship between the keystroke and the change in visual information is arbitrary. The present study examined whether the sensation of heaviness, stiffness and bumpiness could be caused when participants' keystroke produced a delayed arbitrary visual feedback. Participants were asked to press and hold down an assigned key to cause temporal luminance changes in a square centered on the display, an arbitrary visual feedback of their keystroke. Not only the onset delay of the temporal luminance change from the participant's keystroke but also the speed of the temporal luminance change were examined as a visual cue to heaviness, stiffness, or bumpiness. In Experiment 1, the participants' task was to give a rating for the strength of the heaviness, stiffness, or bumpiness perceived when they pressed the key. Our results showed that the heaviness and stiffness ratings increased as the delay increased and decreased as the speed increased. To check whether the manipulation of the delay and speed of the visual feedback caused changes in the subjective evaluation of sensorimotor incongruence, in Experiment 2, we asked the participants to give a rating for the sense of agency. The rating scores decreased as the delay increased and increased as the speed increased. The delay and speed influenced the rating scores for the sense of agency in the opposite direction to those for heaviness/stiffness. We discuss that the brain determines the heaviness and stiffness during a keystroke based on internalized statistics relating to the delay and speed of the action feedback.

Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers.

Contrary to the assumption of arbitrariness in modern linguistics, sound symbolism, which is the non-arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings, exists. Sound symbolism, including the “Bouba–Kiki” effect, implies the universality of such relationships; individuals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can similarly relate sound-symbolic words to referents, although the extent of these similarities remains to be fully understood. Here, we examined if subjects from different countries could similarly infer the surface texture properties from words that sound-symbolically represent hardness in Japanese. We prepared Japanese sound-symbolic words of which novelty was manipulated by a genetic algorithm (GA). Japanese speakers in Japan and English speakers in both Singapore and the United States rated these words based on surface texture properties (hardness, warmness, and roughness), as well as familiarity. The results show that hardness-related words were rated as harder and rougher than softness-related words, regardless of novelty and countries. Multivariate analyses of the ratings classified the hardness-related words along the hardness-softness dimension at over 80% accuracy, regardless of country. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the number of speech sounds /g/ and /k/ predicted the ratings of the surface texture properties in non-Japanese countries, suggesting a systematic relationship between phonetic features of a word and perceptual quality represented by the word across culturally and linguistically diverse samples.

(Sub)lexical changes in iconic signs to realign with community sensibilities and experiences

AbstractSign language lexicons include iconic items, where phonological form is somewhat representative of sense. As experiences of individuals change, the mapping from form to meaning may become inappropriate (as when technological or environmental changes occur) or may be considered incongruous with perceptions of reality (as when culture shifts). Many misalignments of form and sense are tolerated, with the result that a sign's original iconicity is lost. Other misalignments are obliterated; signers make sublexical changes or entire lexical substitutions. We call these (sub)lexical changes ‘corrections’. We argue that misalignments that are regrettable are more likely to be corrected, where regrettable misalignments are those that are not true to realities/experiences of profound importance to deaf individuals.While the focus here is on American Sign Language, corrections should be apparent in any sign language and might occur in those spoken languages with a high frequency of nonarbitrary relationships between form and sense. (Sign language, variation, taboo terms, euphemism, iconicity, identity)*

What Does a Horgous Look Like? Nonsense Words Elicit Meaningful Drawings.

To what extent do people attribute meanings to "nonsense" words? How general is such attribution of meaning? We used a set of words lacking conventional meanings to elicit drawings of made-up creatures. Separate groups of participants rated the nonsense words and the drawings on several semantic dimensions and selected what name best corresponded to each creature. Despite lacking conventional meanings, "nonsense" words elicited a high level of consistency in the produced drawings. Meaning attributions made to nonsense words corresponded with meaning attributions made by separate people to drawings that were inspired by the name. Naïve participants were able to recover the name that inspired the drawing with greater-than-chance accuracy. These results suggest that people make liberal and consistent use of non-arbitrary relationships between forms and meanings. OPEN RESEARCH BADGES: This article has been awarded Open Materials and Open Data badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/8juyc/. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Orangutans' Comprehension of Zoo Keepers' Communicative Signals.

Simple SummaryMost modern zoos work towards the promotion of captive animals’ welfare. One way of achieving this is by encouraging cooperative interactions between keepers and zoo animals, for instance during sessions of conditioning training. To be most effective, communication between them should use those channels that are most useful to the animals. In this study, we asked whether captive orangutans were capable of understanding keepers’ instructions when they were employing words only, gazes only, gestures only, or all signal types combined. Our results indicate that the subjects only need gestures to respond to the keepers’ instructions. In two other experiments, we examined why gestures were so effective. One hypothesis was that they resemble what they refer to. However, we found no indication that gestures providing iconicity or even pointing could help orangutans acquire associations between a new gesture and referent. Our results suggest that, among human communicative signals, captive orangutans would prefer gestures. Why this is the case should be the focus of future research.Zoological institutions often encourage cooperative interactions between keepers and animals so as to promote animals’ welfare. One useful technique has been conditioning training, whereby animals learn to respond to keepers’ requests, which facilitates a number of, otherwise sensitive, daily routines. As various media have been used to convey keepers’ instructions, the question remains of which modality is best to promote mutual understanding. Here, we explored this question with two captive female orangutans. In the first experiment, we compared orangutans’ understanding of previously acquired instructions when those were performed with verbal signals only, gazes only, gestures only, and when all those modalities were combined. Our results showed that gestures were sufficient for successful comprehension by these two apes. In the second experiment, we asked whether this preference could be driven by the non-arbitrary relationship that gestures bear to what they refer to, through iconicity or pointing. Our results revealed that neither iconicity nor pointing helped the subjects comprehend the keepers’ instructions. Our results indicate a preference for instructions given through gestural signals in two captive female orangutans, although its cause remains elusive. Future practice may encourage the use of gestures in communication between keepers and orangutans in general or potentially other animals.

Guessing Meaning From Word Sounds of Unfamiliar Languages: A Cross-Cultural Sound Symbolism Study.

Sound symbolism refers to a non-arbitrary relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning. With the aim to better investigate this relationship by using natural languages, in the present cross-linguistic study 215 Italian and Polish participants were asked to listen to words pronounced in 4 unknown non-indo-European languages (Finnish, Japanese, Swahili, Tamil) and to try to guess the correct meaning of each word, by choosing among 3 alternatives visualized on a computer screen. The alternatives were presented in the mother tongue of participants. Three different word categories were presented: nouns, verbs and adjectives. A first overall analysis confirmed a semantic role of sound symbols, the performance of participants being higher than expected by chance. When analyzed separately for each language and for each word category, the results were significant for Finnish and Japanese, whereas the recognition rate was not significantly better than chance for Swahili and Tamil. Results were significant for nouns and verbs, but not for adjectives. We confirm the existence of sound symbolic processing in natural unknown languages, and we speculate that some possible difference in the iconicity of the languages could be the basis for the difference we found. Importantly, the evidence that there were no differences between Italian and Polish participants allows us to conclude that the sound symbolism is independent of the mother tongue of the listener.

Crossmodal correspondence between haptic shape and sound

Accumulating evidence has demonstrated the existence of non-arbitrary correspondence between sensory modalities. For example, studies report non-arbitrary relationship between visual shape and sound: people tend to label a round shape 'bouba' and a spiky shape 'kiki' (Köhler, 1947; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). Since such relationship is well established mostly in the visual and auditory domain, the present study aimed to examine the correspondence between the haptic and auditory modality, which has not been illuminated much in previous studies. A three-dimensional, round and a spiky haptic stimulus were generated with a parametric shape model (Lee Masson et al., 2016), and linear interpolation was carried out on the coordinates of the two stimuli to generate five more stimuli in between. As a result, there were total seven haptic stimuli, of which the roundness/spikiness dimension was equi-distantly manipulated. Multidimensional scaling analysis confirmed that physical spaces conformed to perceptual space, showing the effectiveness of the manipulation of the physical parameters. For the auditory stimuli, we used Haskins Articulatory Synthesizer to generate two vowel sounds by manipulating the height and frontness of the tongue body position (e.g. /a/, /i/). These sounds were shown to be associated with either round or spiky visual shape (Kwak et al., iMRF 2017). On each trial of the experiment, participants (N=19) had to palpate a haptic stimulus for 5 seconds, after which it was taken away by the experimenter. Then the two sounds were presented sequentially, and the participants had to choose the sound that better matched the object. Results showed the main effect of shape: the roundest object was associated with /a/, whereas the spikiest object was associated with /i/, and responses for the objects in between were modulated according to the roundness/spikiness dimension. These results suggest that the correspondence between shape and sound extends to haptics and audition. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018

How ‘shared’ is shared reading: Book-focused infant–educator interactions in long day-care centres

Children's language experiences in the first two years of life are inextricably connected with their current and future language and literacy development. Research has shown that mother–child shared reading of picture books is a practice that can promote this development. Little is known, however, about the shared reading experiences of infants attending early childhood education and care centres. This naturalistic study analysed the reading experiences of 10 infants observed during a three-hour period as they and their educators went about their typical activities in their early childhood education and care centres. Drawing on Halliday's systemic functional linguistic theory, which proposes a non-arbitrary relationship between language use and features of the material setting, this study analysed two aspects of the infants' shared reading experiences: the tenor (roles and relationships) realised in the educators' use of speech function, and the field (the topic or subject matter) realised in the vocabulary used. The manner in which these contextual variables are realised in the adult–child talk during shared reading affects the pedagogical potential of this practice. The findings reveal that the infants had little opportunity to initiate or participate in book-focused interactions with their educators, with implications for their language and literacy learning opportunities.

On logophagy and truth: Interpretation through incorporation among Peruvian Urarina

This paper develops an Amazonian critique of Western theories of interpretation as grounded in correspondence between a proposition and a state of affairs, and of truth as correspondence between mind and reality. For the Peruvian Urarina, language has materiality and force and implies a non-arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, and is moreover based in a very different mode of adequation of person to world: a process grounded in absorption rather than representation. The view that words are effectively consumed by others is exemplified by the baau genre of ritual discourse, in which a healer's speech is literally digested by the patient as a core part of the healing process.

An Investigation of Sound-Symbolism in the Context of Tactile Feeling

ABSTRACTSound symbolism suggests a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and the concepts to which those sounds refer (Hinton, Nichols, & Ohala, 2006). Supporting evidence comes primarily from studies investigating how speech sounds relate to semantically compatible visual concepts. The present study therefore attempted to examine sound symbolism in the context of tactile perception. Contrary to the propositions of sound symbolism, participants in Experiment 1 did not consistently assign names with plosive consonant to objects with curved frames. Experiment 2, however, found that names with fricative consonants were more likely to be applied to materials with rough surfaces. The results suggested the existence of a direct relationship between speech sounds and their referent concepts that could be crucial in revealing the phenomenon of sound symbolism. A future study was also proposed to study the contributions of mouth shape and airflow to associations between speech sounds and tactile feelings. (161 words)

The development of spontaneous sound-shape matching in monolingual and bilingual infants during the first year.

Recently it has been proposed that sensitivity to nonarbitrary relationships between speech sounds and objects potentially bootstraps lexical acquisition. However, it is currently unclear whether preverbal infants (e.g., before 6 months of age) with different linguistic profiles are sensitive to such nonarbitrary relationships. Here, the authors assessed 4- and 12-month-old Basque monolingual and Spanish-Basque bilingual infants' sensitivity to cross-modal correspondences between sound symbolic nonwords without syllable repetition (buba, kike) and drawings of rounded and angular shapes. The findings demonstrate that sensitivity to sound-shape correspondences emerge by 12 months of age in both monolinguals and bilinguals. This finding suggests that spontaneous sound-shape matching is likely to be the product of language learning and development and may not be readily available prior to the onset of word learning. (PsycINFO Database Record

Onomatopoeia – Showing-word or Saying-word? Relevance Theory, lexis, and the communication of impressions

Onomatopoeia is typically described as involving the use of words which imitate sounds. The study of onomatopoeia is often approached through theories of sound symbolism. However, while such approaches provide rich descriptions of onomatopoeia, they have generally paid little attention to the role of onomatopoeia in communication. In this study, we focus on onomatopoeia as a communicative phenomenon, considering what the use of onomatopoeia communicates, and how it is communicated. Our main claim is that onomatopoeia falls on the showing–saying continuum (Wharton, 2009), and involves elements of both showing and saying, contributing to relevance by providing direct evidence for some of the meaning it communicates. We argue that onomatopoeia involves the exploitation of resemblances, and that the non-arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning is a result of the communicator's attempts to recreate his sensory experience using sounds which provide a faithful enough representation of his experience. What is communicated by the use of onomatopoeia is both vague and context-dependent: it amounts to what relevance theorists call an impression rather than a determinate meaning. Our analysis also extends to multimodal and cross-modal communicative behaviours and should therefore pave the way for further investigation of the interface between verbal and non-verbal communication.

A faster path between meaning and form? Iconicity facilitates sign recognition and production in British Sign Language

Abstract A standard view of language processing holds that lexical forms are arbitrary, and that non-arbitrary relationships between meaning and form such as onomatopoeias are unusual cases with little relevance to language processing in general. Here we capitalize on the greater availability of iconic lexical forms in a signed language (British Sign Language, BSL), to test how iconic relationships between meaning and form affect lexical processing. In three experiments, we found that iconicity in BSL facilitated picture–sign matching, phonological decision, and picture naming. In comprehension the effect of iconicity did not interact with other factors, but in production it was observed only for later-learned signs. These findings suggest that iconicity serves to activate conceptual features related to perception and action during lexical processing. We suggest that the same should be true for iconicity in spoken languages (e.g., onomatopoeias), and discuss the implications this has for general theories of lexical processing.

The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution.

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture.

Vowel-colour Symbolism in English and Arabic: A Comparative Study

Sound symbolism, or the non-arbitrary relationship between the formal and the semantic components of language, has traditionally been a neglected area, mostly due to the strong influence of Saussure’s structuralism during the 20th century. However, it is nowadays receiving strong attention and being subjected to relevant experimental work. The present paper aims at contributing to the field of sound symbolism by means of two experimental tasks with English and Arabic participants that analyse the connection between vowel sounds and colours. The data gathered suggest that participants strongly associate sounds and colours at a better than chance degree, and that although coincidences between the two languages studied exist, the association seems to be strongly influenced by linguistic, cultural and idiosyncratic factors

Editorial introduction: The return of sound symbolism

This special issue of The Public Journal of Semiotics presents four contributions devoted to the phenomenon of sound symbolism: the motivated, non-arbitrary relationship between sound shapes and meanings in language.

Application of Osteorisk to postmenopausal patients with osteoporosis.

Identification of women at risk of bone fracture is becoming less dependent on evaluating bone mineral density through placing greater value on clinical risk factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity of the Osteorisk clinical tool for identifying Brazilian postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, compared with bone densitometry. Cross-sectional observational study at Faculdade de Medicina do ABC. Information on 812 postmenopausal osteoporotic women was retrospectively evaluated from medical records. The women were divided into the age groups 50-59, 60-69, 70-79 and over 80 years. The results from the Osteorisk clinical tool, which uses only age and weight, were compared with bone densitometry T-scores. There were significant correlations between the results from the Osteorisk clinical tool and from bone densitometry, in relation to the lumbar spine (P = 0.027) and hip (P < 0.001), thus showing a non-arbitrary relationship. The overall sensitivity of Osteorisk for identifying women with "high risk of osteoporosis" was 86.5%, and it was higher for hip osteoporosis alone (97.2%) than for lumbar spine osteoporosis (85.8%). The sensitivity was better among older women. Osteorisk seems to present good sensitivity for identifying postmenopausal women at risk of osteoporosis. It should be used when bone densitometry is not easily available or as a means of selecting individuals for referral for bone densitometry.