Sound symbolism, sonority, and swearing : an affect induction perspective

viii, 89 leaves : ill. ; 28 cmThe relationship between word form and word meaning has been debated since early Greek philosophy. Conventionally, the relationship is held to be arbitrary: that there is no natural connection between a word and what it represents (de Saussure 1959). In contrast, examples of sound symbolism undermine this linguistic tenet by demonstrating non-arbitrary word meanings conveyed in details of the acoustic signal of the words themselves. The Affect Induction model of animal communication offers a natural explanation for some forms of sound symbolism in language. According to the Affect Induction model, the physical properties of signals influence receiver affect and behavior in specific ways through relatively direct effects on core sensory, psychological and affective processes. To investigate the possible implications of this model for sound symbolism in human language, a set of studies was conducted on the classic “bouba-kiki” phenomenon. An analysis was subsequently undertaken to extend the results of experiments to several corpuses of real words classically associated with divergent affective themes. Results suggest that the Affect Induction model might account for some forms of sound symbolism, as instantiated in real word usage

Is Reduced Visual Processing the Price of Language?

We suggest a later timeline for full language capabilities in Homo sapiens, placing the emergence of language over 200,000 years after the emergence of our species. The late Paleolithic period saw several significant changes. Homo sapiens became more gracile and gradually lost significant brain volumes. Detailed realistic cave paintings disappeared completely, and iconic/symbolic ones appeared at other sites. This may indicate a shift in perceptual abilities, away from an accurate perception of the present. Language in modern humans interact with vision. One example is the McGurk effect. Studies show that artistic abilities may improve when language-related brain areas are damaged or temporarily knocked out. Language relies on many pre-existing non-linguistic functions. We suggest that an overwhelming flow of perceptual information, vision, in particular, was an obstacle to language, as is sometimes implied in autism with relative language impairment. We systematically review the recent research literature investigating the relationship between language and perception. We see homologues of language-relevant brain functions predating language. Recent findings show brain lateralization for communicative gestures in other primates without language, supporting the idea that a language-ready brain may be overwhelmed by raw perception, thus blocking overt language from evolving. We find support in converging evidence for a change in neural organization away from raw perception, thus pushing the emergence of language closer in time. A recent origin of language makes it possible to investigate the genetic origins of language.publishedVersio

Análisis multi-sensorial : integración de los sentidos y la percepción del gusto

The term multi-sensorial refers to the integration of the senses in the brain, since the perception of taste is affected by: sight, touch, smell, hearing. In addition, other factors may influence, such as: the type of tongue, super-tasters and non-tasters; the culture, the price, the brand and the environment...El término multi- sensorial hace referencia a la integración de los sentidos en el cerebro, ya que la percepción del gusto se ve afectada por: la vista, el tacto, el olfato, el oído. Además, influyen otros factores como: el tipo de lengua, súper- catadores y no- catadores; la cultura, el precio, la marca y la ambientación..

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

Indicios de correspondencias transmodales entre estímulos visuales, auditivos y palabras, en niños de 6, 8 y 10 años de edad

El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar los indicios de las correspondencias transmodales entre estímulosvisuales, auditivos, y palabras, en niños de 6, 8 y 10 años. Las correspondencias transmodales soncombinaciones entre estímulos de modalidades sensoriales diferentes que al ser percibidos se integran y seprocesan en el cerebro como unidad (Spence, 2012). Se aplicó el modelo intra-sujeto, de enfoque cuantitativo,descriptivo y cuasi experimental, se aplicó el cuestionario desarrollado por Ramachandran y Hubbard (2001) yla prueba basada en el Test de Asociación Implícita de (Greenwald, Nosek y Banaji, 2003), a 69 niños y niñasescolarizados de 6, 8 y 10 años de edad, la muestra fue seleccionada por conveniencia. Se tuvo por variableindependiente la edad de los participantes y por variables dependientes los indicadores de las pruebasaplicadas: distancia y tiempo de reacción. Se encontraron indicios de correspondencias transmodalesestadísticamente significativos entre: estímulos visuales y auditivos, visuales y palabras, auditivos y palabras, entodas las edades.The objective of this research is to identify the signs of the crossmodal correspondences between visual stimuli,auditory stimuli, and words, in children aged 6, 8 and 10. The crossmodal correspondences are combinations ofstimuli of different sensory modalities are integrated to be perceived and processed in the brain as a unit(Spence, 2012). Model was applied intra -subject quantitative approach, descriptive and quasi-experimental, weapplied the questionnaire developed by Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001) and the test based on the ImplicitAssociation Test (Greenwald, Nosek y Banaji, 2003), to 69 school children of 6, 8 and 10 years old, the samplewas selected for convenience. The independent variable was the age of the participants and dependentvariables of the tests applied indicators: distance and reaction time. Was no evidence of statistically significantcrossmodal correspondences between: visual and auditory stimuli, visual stimuli and words, auditory stimuliand words, in all agesPsicólogo (a)Pregrad

The Effects of Inward versus Outward Articulation Dynamics on Familiarity

Familiarity can be described as the diffuse feeling of knowing a stimulus without being able to recall an actual previous encounter with it. The experiments in this dissertation (total N = 1,043) found that the articulation dynamics of pseudo-words can influence this perceived familiarity in different recognition paradigms. Specifically, pseudo-words following a consonantal inward pattern were perceived as more familiar than pseudo-words following a consonantal outward pattern, consequently leading to more frequent hits as well as false alarms in recognition experiments. Alternative explanations of the effect such as an affirmation tendency or a recollection advantage could be excluded. Two final studies explored the mechanism behind the effect of consonantal direction on familiarity, showing that it was independent of both liking and articulatory fluency of the stimuli. These findings suggest that the effect of consonantal direction on familiarity is distinct from a previously found effect of consonantal direction on liking and preference. Potential applications of the effect as well as implications for the role of affect in recognition memory are discussed