Dance Generation by Sound Symbolic Words

This study introduces a novel approach to generate dance motions using onomatopoeia as input, with the aim of enhancing creativity and diversity in dance generation. Unlike text and music, onomatopoeia conveys rhythm and meaning through abstract word expressions without constraints on expression and without need for specialized knowledge. We adapt the AI Choreographer framework and employ the Sakamoto system, a feature extraction method for onomatopoeia focusing on phonemes and syllables. Additionally, we present a new dataset of 40 onomatopoeia-dance motion pairs collected through a user survey. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method enables more intuitive dance generation and can create dance motions using sound-symbolic words from a variety of languages, including those without onomatopoeia. This highlights the potential for diverse dance creation across different languages and cultures, accessible to a wider audience. Qualitative samples from our model can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/onomatopoeia-dance/home/

The building blocks of sound symbolism

Languages contain thousands of words each and are made up by a seemingly endless collection of sound combinations. Yet a subsection of these show clear signs of corresponding word shapes for the same meanings which is generally known as vocal iconicity and sound symbolism. This dissertation explores the boundaries of sound symbolism in the lexicon from typological, functional and evolutionary perspectives in an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the role sound symbolism plays in human language. In order to achieve this, the subject in question was triangulated by investigating different methodologies which included lexical data from a large number of language families, experiment participants and robust statistical tests.Study I investigates basic vocabulary items in a large number of language families in order to establish the extent of sound symbolic items in the core of the lexicon, as well as how the sound-meaning associations are mapped and interconnected. This study shows that by expanding the lexical dataset compared to previous studies and completely controlling for genetic bias, a larger number of sound-meaning associations can be established. In addition, by placing focus on the phonetic and semantic features of sounds and meanings, two new types of sounds symbolism could be established, along with 20 semantically and phonetically superordinate concepts which could be linked to the semantic development of the lexicon.Study II explores how sound symbolic associations emerge in arbitrary words through sequential transmission over language users. This study demonstrates that transmission of signals is sufficient for iconic effects to emerge and does not require interactional communication. Furthermore, it also shows that more semantically marked meanings produce stronger effects and that iconicity in the size and shape domains seems to be dictated by similarities between the internal semantic relationships of each oppositional word pair and its respective associated sounds.Studies III and IV use color words to investigate differences and similarities between low-level cross-modal associations and sound symbolism in lexemes. Study III explores the driving factors of cross-modal associations between colors and sounds by experimentally testing implicit preferences between several different acoustic and visual parameters. The most crucial finding was that neither specific hues nor specific vowels produced any notable effects and it is therefore possible that previously reported associations between vowels and colors are actually dependent on underlying visual and acoustic parameters.Study IV investigates sound symbolic associations in words for colors in a large number of language families by correlating acoustically described segments with luminance and saturation values obtained from cross-linguistic color-naming data. In accordance with Study III, this study showed that luminance produced the strongest results and was primarily associated with vowels, while saturation was primarily associated with consonants. This could then be linked to cross-linguistic lexicalization order of color words.To summarize, this dissertation shows the importance of studying the underlying parameters of sound symbolism semantically and phonetically in both language users and cross-linguistic language data. In addition, it also shows the applicability of non-arbitrary sound-meaning associations for gaining a deeper understanding of how linguistic categories have developed evolutionarily and historically

Relative Use of Phonaesthemes in the Constitution and Development of Genres

My research question is Does the presence of phonaesthemes in words play a role in the constitution and evolution of genres? A phonaestheme is a phonemic grouping that correlates well above chance with a particular semantic quality in etymologically unrelated words; phonaesthematic words are generally seen as vivid, expressive, and involved. I explore the nature of phonaesthemes and genres and the role of features such as phonaesthemes in the constitution of genres. I select a set of phonaesthemes to evaluate and choose a representative set of lemmas and matching non-phonaesthematic lemmas. I survey these in six genres over three time periods in the US and the UK. I analyze the results and their implications for phonaesthemes and for genre constitution, finding, among other things, that phonaesthemes are important in the social positioning of genres. The summary answer to my research question is thus found to be Yes, it does

Interaction between grasping and articulation : How vowel and consonant pronunciation influences precision and power grip responses

Grasping and mouth movements have been proposed to be integrated anatomically, functionally and evolutionarily. In line with this, we have shown that there is a systematic interaction between particular speech units and grip performance. For example, when the task requires pronouncing a speech unit simultaneously with grasp response, the speech units [i] and [t] are associated with relatively rapid and accurate precision grip responses, while [ɑ] and [k] are associated with power grip responses. This study is aimed at complementing the picture about which vowels and consonants are associated with these grasp types. The study validated our view that the high-front vowels and the alveolar consonants are associated with precision grip responses, while low and high-back vowels as well as velar consonants or those whose articulation involves the lowering of the tongue body are associated with power grip responses. This paper also proposes that one reason why small/large concepts are associated with specific speech sounds in the sound-magnitude symbolism is because articulation of these sounds is programmed within the overlapping mechanisms of precision or power grasping.Peer reviewe

Vocal imitations and the identification of sound events

International audienceIt is commonly observed that a speaker vocally imitates a sound that she or he intends to communicate to an interlocutor. We report on an experiment that examined the assumption that vocal imitations can e ffectively communicate a referent sound, and that they do so by conveying the features necessary for the identifi cation of the referent sound event. Subjects were required to sort a set of vocal imitations of everyday sounds. The resulting clusters corresponded in most of the cases to the categories of the referent sound events, indicating that the imitations enabled the listeners to recover what was imitated. Furthermore, a binary decision tree analysis showed that a few characteristic acoustic features predicted the clusters. These features also predicted the classi fication of the referent sounds, but did not generalize to the categorization of other sounds. This showed that, for the speaker, vocally imitating a sound consists of conveying the acoustic features important for recognition, within the constraints of human vocal production. As such vocal imitations prove to be a phenomenon potentially useful to study sound identifi cation

Iconicity in Language and Speech

Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit dem großen Oberthema der Ikonizität und ihrer Verbreitung auf verschiedenen linguistischen Ebenen. Ikonizität bezeichnet die Ähnlichkeit zwischen der sprachlichen Form und ihrer Bedeutung (vgl. Perniss und Vigliocco, 2014). So wie eine Skulptur einem Objekt oder einer Person ähnelt, kann auch der Klang oder die Form von Wörtern der Sache ähneln, auf die sie verweisen. Frühere theoretische Ansätze betonen, dass die Arbitrarität von sprachlichen Zeichen und deren Bedeutung ein Hauptmerkmal menschlicher Sprache ist und Ikonizität für die Sprachevolution eine Rolle gespielt haben mag, jedoch in der heutigen Sprache zu vernachlässigen ist. Im Gegensatz dazu ist das Hauptanliegen dieser Arbeit, das Potenzial und die Bedeutung von Ikonizität in der heutigen Sprache zu untersuchen. Die einzelnen Kapitel der Dissertation können als separate Teile betrachtet werden, die in ihrer Gesamtheit das umfassende Spektrum der Ikonizität sichtbar machen. Von der sprachevolutionären Debatte ausgehend wird in den einzelnen Kapiteln auf die unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Ikonizität eingegangen. Es werden experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Lautsymbolik, am Beispiel der deutschen Pokémon-Namen, zur ikonischen Prosodie und zu ikonischen Wörtern, den sogenannten Ideophonen, vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Untersuchungen deuten auf die weite Verbreitung der Ikonizität im heutigen Deutsch hin. Darüber hinaus entschlüsselt diese Dissertation das kommunikative Potenzial der Ikonizität als eine Kraft, die nicht nur die Entstehung der Sprache ermöglichte, sondern auch nach Jahrtausenden bestehen bleibt, sich immer wieder neu entfaltet und uns tagtäglich in mündlicher, schriftlicher Form und in Gesten begegnet.This dissertation is concerned with the major theme of iconicity and its prevalence on different linguistic levels. Iconicity refers to a resemblance between the linguistic form and the meaning of a referent (cf. Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014). Just like a sculpture resembles an object or a model, so can the sound or shape of words resemble the thing they refer to. Previous theoretical approaches emphasize that arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is one of the main features of human language; iconicity, however, may have played a role for language evolution, but is negligible in contemporary language. In contrast, the main point of this thesis is to explore the potential and the importance of iconicity in the language nowadays. The individual chapters of the dissertation can be viewed as separate parts that, taken together, reveal the comprehensive spectrum of iconicity. Starting from the language evolutionary debate, the individual chapters address iconicity on different linguistic levels. I present experimental evidence on sound symbolism, using the example of German Pokémon names, on iconic prosody, and on iconic words, the so-called ideophones. The results of the individual investigations point to the widespread use of iconicity in contemporary German. Moreover, this dissertation deciphers the communicative potential of iconicity as a force that not only enabled the emergence of language, but also persists after millennia, unfolding again and again and encountering us every day in speech, writing, and gestures

The phylogenetic origin and mechanism of sound symbolism - the role of action-perception circuits

As opposed to the classic Saussurean view on the arbitrary relationship between linguistic form and meaning, non-arbitrariness is a pervasive feature in human language. Sound symbolism—namely, the intrinsic relationship between meaningless speech sounds and visual shapes—is a typical case of non-arbitrariness. A demonstration of sound symbolism is the “maluma-takete” effect, in which immanent links are observed between meaningless ‘round’ or ‘sharp’ speech sounds (e.g., maluma vs. takete) and round or sharp abstract visual shapes, respectively. An extensive amount of empirical work suggests that these mappings are shared by humans and play a distinct role in the emergence and acquisition of language. However, important questions are still pending on the origins and mechanism of sound symbolic processing. Those questions are addressed in the present work. The first part of this dissertation focuses on the validation of sound symbolic effects in a forced choice task, and on the interaction of sound symbolism with two crossmodal mappings shared by humans. To address this question, human subjects were tested with a forced choice task on sound symbolic mappings crossed with two crossmodal audiovisual mappings (pitch-shape and pitch-spatial position). Subjects performed significantly above chance only for the sound symbolic associations but not for the other two mappings. Sound symbolic effects were replicated, while the other two crossmodal mappings involving low-level audiovisual properties, such as pitch and spatial position, did not emerge. The second issue examined in the present dissertation are the phylogenetic origins of sound symbolic associations. Human subjects and a group of touchscreen trained great apes were tested with a forced choice task on sound symbolic mappings. Only humans were able to process and/or infer the links between meaningless speech sounds and abstract shapes. These results reveal, for the first time, the specificity of humans’ sound symbolic ability, which can be related to neurobiological findings on the distinct development and connectivity of the human language network. The last part of the dissertation investigates whether action knowledge and knowledge of the perceptual outputs of our actions can provide a possible explanation of sound symbolic mappings. In a series of experiments, human subjects performed sound symbolic mappings, and mappings of ‘round’ or ‘sharp’ hand actions sounds with the shapes produced by these hand actions. In addition, the auditory and visual stimuli of both conditions were crossed. Subjects significantly detected congruencies for all mappings, and most importantly, a positive correlation was observed in their performances across conditions. Physical acoustic and visual similarities between the audiovisual byproducts of our hand actions with the sound symbolic pseudowords and shapes show that the link between meaningless speech sounds and abstract visual shapes is found in action knowledge. From a neurobiological perspective the link between actions and the audiovisual by-products of our actions is also in accordance with distributed action perception circuits in the human brain. Action-perception circuits, supported by the human neuroanatomical connectivity between auditory, visual, and motor cortices, and under associative learning, emerge and carry the perceptual and motor knowledge of our actions. These findings give a novel explanation for how symbolic communication is linked to our sensorimotor experiences. To sum up, the present dissertation (i) validates the presence of sound symbolic effects in a forced choice task, (ii) shows that sound symbolic ability is specific to humans, and (iii) that action knowledge can provide the mechanistic glue of mapping meaningless speech sounds to abstract shapes. Overall, the present work contributes to a better understanding of the phylogenetic origins and mechanism of sound symbolic ability in humans.Im Gegensatz zur klassischen Saussureschen Ansicht über die willkürliche Beziehung zwischen sprachlicher Form und Bedeutung ist die Nichtwillkürlichkeit ein durchdringendes Merkmal der menschlichen Sprache. Lautsymbolik—nämlich die intrinsische Beziehung zwischen bedeutungslosen Sprachlauten und visuellen Formen—ist ein typischer Fall von Nichtwillkürlichkeit. Ein Beispiel für Klangsymbolik ist der “malumatakete” Effekt, bei dem immanente Verbindungen zwischen bedeutungslosen ‘runden’ oder ‘scharfen’ Sprachlauten (z.B. maluma vs. takete) und runden bzw. scharfen abstrakten visuellen Formen beobachtet werden. Umfangreiche empirische Arbeiten legen nahe, dass diese Zuordnungen von Menschen vorgenommen werden und bei der Entstehung und dem Erwerb von Sprache eine besondere Rolle spielen. Wichtige Fragen zu Ursprung und Mechanismus der Verarbeitung von Lautsymbolen sind jedoch noch offen. Diese Fragen werden in der vorliegenden Arbeit behandelt. Der erste Teil dieser Dissertation konzentriert sich auf die Validierung von klangsymbolischen Effekten in einer Forced-Choice-Auswahlaufgabe (erzwungene Wahl) und auf die Interaktion von Klangsymbolik mit zwei crossmodalen Mappings, die von Menschen vorgenommen werden. Um dieser Frage nachzugehen, wurden menschliche Probanden mit einer Auswahlaufgabe mit zwei Auswahlmöglichkeiten auf klangsymbolische Zuordnungen getestet , die mit zwei crossmodalen audiovisuellen Zuordnungen (Tonhöhenform und Tonhöhen-Raum-Position) gekreuzt wurden. Die Versuchspersonen erbrachten nur bei den klangsymbolischen Assoziationen eine signifikant über dem Zufall liegende Leistung, nicht aber bei den beiden anderen Zuordnungen. Tonsymbolische Effekte wurden repliziert, während die beiden anderen crossmodalen Zuordnungen, die audiovisuelle Eigenschaften auf niedriger Ebene wie Tonhöhe und räumliche Position beinhalteten, nicht auftraten. Das zweite Thema, das in der vorliegenden Dissertation untersucht wird, sind die phylogenetischen Ursprünge der klangsymbolischen Assoziationen. Menschliche Versuchspersonen und eine Gruppe von Menschenaffen, die auf Touchscreens trainiert wurden, wurden mit einer Forced-Choice-Aufgabe auf klangsymbolische Zuordnungen getestet. Nur Menschen waren in der Lage, die Verbindungen zwischen bedeutungslosen Sprachlauten und abstrakten Formen zu verarbeiten und/oder abzuleiten. Diese Ergebnisse zeigen zum ersten Mal die Spezifität der lautsymbolischen Fähigkeit des Menschen, die mit neurobiologischen Erkenntnissen über die ausgeprägte Entwicklung und Konnektivität des menschlichen Sprachnetzwerks in Verbindung gebracht werden kann. Der letzte Teil der Dissertation untersucht darüber hinaus, ob Handlungswissen und das Wissen um die Wahrnehmungsergebnisse unserer Handlungen eine mögliche Erklärung für solide symbolische Mappings liefern können. In einer Reihe von Experimenten führten menschliche Versuchspersonen klangsymbolische Mappings durch sowie Mappings von ‘runden’ oder ‘scharfen’ Handaktionen Klänge mit den durch diese Handaktionen erzeugten Formen. Darüber hinaus wurden die auditiven und visuellen Reize beider Bedingungen gekreuzt. Die Probanden stellten bei allen Zuordnungen signifikant Kongruenzen fest, und, was am wichtigsten war, es wurde eine positive Korrelation ihrer Leistungen unter allen Bedingungen beobachtet. Physikalische akustische und visuelle Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den audiovisuellen Nebenprodukten unserer Handaktionen mit den klangsymbolischen Pseudowörtern und Formen zeigen, dass die Verbindung zwischen bedeutungslosen Sprachlauten und abstrakten visuellen Formen im Handlungswissen zu finden ist. Aus neurobiologischer Sicht stimmt die Verbindung zwischen Handlungen und den audiovisuellen Nebenprodukten unserer Handlungen auch mit den verteilten Handlungs- und Wahrnehmungskreisläufen im menschlichen Gehirn überein. Aktions- Wahrnehmungsnetzwerken, die durch die neuroanatomische Konnektivität zwischen auditorischen, visuellen und motorischen kortikalen Arealen des Menschen unterstützt werden, entstehen und tragen unter assoziativem Lernen das perzeptuelle und motorische Wissen unserer Handlungen. Diese Erkenntnisse geben eine neuartige Erklärung dafür, wie symbolische Kommunikation in unseren sensomotorischen Erfahrungen verknüpft ist. Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass die vorliegende Dissertation (i) das Vorhandensein von lautsymbolischen Effekten in einer Forced-Choice-Aufgabe validiert, (ii) zeigt, dass lautsymbolische Fähigkeiten spezifisch für Menschen sind, und (iii) dass Handlungswissen den mechanistischen Klebstoff liefern kann, um bedeutungslose Sprachlaute auf abstrakte Formen abzubilden. Insgesamt trägt die vorliegende Arbeit zu einem besseren Verständnis der phylogenetischen Ursprünge und des Mechanismus der lautsymbolischen Fähigkeit des Menschen bei

SHIFT FROM EDUCATION TO DEVELOPMENT: LEADERS AND COACHES IN SEARCH OF SHARED WISDOM

This paper presents the results of qualitative study aimed to explore the relationship between the perception of behaviors that support people development, core coaching competences and values supporting them, and wisdom-related values. Our hypothesis was that the reflection on empowering behaviors focuses managers’ attention on wisdom-related values that are very close to the core values of coaching and therefore facilitate their progress towards wisdom-related performance. Sample consisted of 306 managers (N = 306) interviewed in 28 groups (N = 28) within leadership development programs in Russia, Ukraine and France from 2008 to 2016. We used the open-ended questions method and qualitative content analysis. The results showed high homogeneity of responses and high degree compatibility between behaviors quoted by respondents and the International Coach Federation core competences. In the second part of the study the responses were analyzed from the point of view of beliefs and values that can support desired developmentally focused / coaching behaviors, and compared the outcome with the existing concepts of wisdom. The study confirmed that the professional training in coaching leads to the cumulative development of wisdom (wisdom-related values, wisdom-related knowledge, wisdom-related performance) because the core of the system of coaching values fundamentally coincide with wisdom-related values

Iconic prosody in story reading

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance (e.g., Shintel et al., 2006). This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed (e.g., a fast drive, slow career progress) and size (e.g., a small grasshopper, an important contract). Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech

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

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