TY - GEN
T1 - Cross-Linguistically Shared and Language-Specific Sound Symbolism for Motion
T2 - 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics, CogSci 2013
AU - Saji, Noburo
AU - Akita, Kimi
AU - Imai, Mutsumi
AU - Kantartzis, Katerina
AU - Kita, Sotaro
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© CogSci 2013.All rights reserved.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - This paper demonstrates a new quantitative approach to identify what is behind universally sensed sound symbolism and sound symbolism detected only by speakers of a particular language. We presented 70 locomotion videos to Japanese and English speakers and asked them to create a word that would sound-symbolically match each action, then to rate the action on five semantic dimensions. Multivariate analyses revealed that certain sound-meaning links (e.g., voicing and speed) were more consistent than others within and across languages. Language-specific sound symbolism was also found for some sound-meaning links (e.g., the affricate manner of articulation was associated with light motions in Japanese, but with heavy motions in English). This implies that cross-linguistically shared and language-specific parts of sound symbolism are intricately intertwined within each language. This research underscores the importance of a bottom-up approach which can exploratorily investigate the complex sound-symbolic systems as a whole.
AB - This paper demonstrates a new quantitative approach to identify what is behind universally sensed sound symbolism and sound symbolism detected only by speakers of a particular language. We presented 70 locomotion videos to Japanese and English speakers and asked them to create a word that would sound-symbolically match each action, then to rate the action on five semantic dimensions. Multivariate analyses revealed that certain sound-meaning links (e.g., voicing and speed) were more consistent than others within and across languages. Language-specific sound symbolism was also found for some sound-meaning links (e.g., the affricate manner of articulation was associated with light motions in Japanese, but with heavy motions in English). This implies that cross-linguistically shared and language-specific parts of sound symbolism are intricately intertwined within each language. This research underscores the importance of a bottom-up approach which can exploratorily investigate the complex sound-symbolic systems as a whole.
KW - canonical correlation analysis
KW - mimetics
KW - sound symbolism
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85083421532
T3 - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2013
SP - 1253
EP - 1258
BT - Cooperative Minds
A2 - Knauff, Markus
A2 - Sebanz, Natalie
A2 - Pauen, Michael
A2 - Wachsmuth, Ipke
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
Y2 - 31 July 2013 through 3 August 2013
ER -