How can we make universally sensed sound-meaning combinations? : Conditions for universal and language-specific sound symbolism.

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26580078
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: IMAI Mutsumi 慶應義塾大学, 環境情報学部(藤沢), 教授 (60255601)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 心理言語学 / 音象徴

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study approaches to examine how cross-linguistically shared and language-specific sound symbolism coexist in a language. We employed a data mining approach to uncover unknown sound-symbolic correspondences in the domain of locomotion, without limiting ourselves to pre-determined sound-meaning correspondences. In the experiment, we presented 70 locomotion videos to Japanese and English speakers and asked them to create a sound symbolically matching word for each action. Participants also rated each action on five meaning variables. Multivariate analyses revealed both cross-linguistically shared and language specific sound symbolism, but the most of the identified sound-meaning correspondences were found only in one language. We suggest that cross-linguistically shared sound symbolism builds upon our bodily experience and that language-specific sound symbolism arises from the constraints of individual languages at the phonetic, phonemic, and lexical levels.

Free Research Field

社会科学