Perception of Sound Symbolism in Mimetic Stimuli: The Voicing Contrast in Japanese and English

The current study investigated sound symbolism in Japanese mimetic stimuli. We examined whether the voicing contrast in consonants (/d, g, z/ vs. /t, k, s/) affects perception both in Japanese native speakers and in English native speakers. Stimuli were evaluated on 4 different dimensions: size (big-small), shape (round-spiky), and two evaluative dimensions (good-bad, graceful-clumsy). The voicing on the stimuli was manipulated, creating a continuum from voiced to voiceless endpoints in order to examine the categorical nature of the perception. The current study found that both Japanese and English speakers tended to associate voiced sounds with largeness, badness, and clumsiness and voiceless sounds with smallness, goodness, and gracefulness. However, for the shape dimension, English speakers only tended to associate voiced stop consonants with roundness and voiceless stops with spikiness. The present results show systematic sound symbolic relationships in terms of voicing for Japanese and English

Perception of sound symbolism in mimetic stimuli: The voicing contrast in Japanese and English

Sound symbolism is a concept in which the sound of a word and the meaning of the word are systematically related. Some aspects of sound symbolism have been found to be language-specific and some to be cross-linguistic. The current study investigated sound symbolism in Japanese using Japanese mimetic non-words. In this study, voicing of consonants was examined and vowel influence was controlled. We examined whether the voicing contrast in consonants (/t, k, s/ vs. /d, g, z/) affects the perception in both Japanese native speakers and English native speakers who had no knowledge of Japanese. Two additional manipulations were also included. First, stimuli were evaluated on 4 different dimensions including both size (big-small) and shape (round-spiky) dimensions as well as evaluative dimensions (good-bad, graceful-clumsy), in order to examine the generality of the sound symbolism. Second, voicing was manipulated, creating a continuum from voiced to voiceless endpoints, in order to examine the categorical nature of the perception. In the current study, both Japanese and English speakers tended to associate voiced sounds with largeness, badness, and clumsiness and voiceless sounds with smallness, goodness, and gracefulness. In addition, the current study found, for a shape dimension, a tendency in English speakers to associate voiced stop consonants with roundness and voiceless stops with spikiness. This tendency was observed when the stimuli consisted of only stops and a vowel, but not when they also contained fricative consonants. Sound symbolism in Japanese and English is discussed

Explicit teaching of Japanese mimetic words using voicing, gemintion, and reduplication rules

Mimetics are commonly used by Japanese native speakers to express the manner of actions and sensations. However, they are often not taught explicitly in many Japanese language classrooms. The current study tested a novel teaching methodology to help English-speaking learners of Japanese learn Japanese mimetics. Second language learners were explicitly taught three phonological/morphological rules during learning. The three rules are: (i) voicing, (ii) gemination, and (iii) reduplication. In Japanese mimetics, these phonological/morphological factors systematically affect the meaning of mimetics. The current study examined whether explicitly teaching these three rules helps English-speaking learners of Japanese, who vary in Japanese proficiency, acquire mimetics as well as help them generalize these rules to newly encountered mimetics. The procedure used a Pretest-Learning-Posttest design. First, all participants took a Pretest. Approximately one week later, all participants learned mimetics during a Learning Session. In the Learning Session, all participants were taught 32 mimetic words with a verbal description and a static picture along with a sentence that contained the mimetic word. There were two different participant groups in the Learning Session: an Experimental Group and a Control Group. The Experimental group explicitly learned the three phonological/morphological rules while the Control group did not. Finally, all learners participated in a Posttest and a Delayed posttest (approximately 4 weeks later) to assess their retention of the mimetic vocabulary. We found that the novel teaching methodology (teaching mimetics with a picture and a context along with a verbal description) is effective in acquiring and remembering mimetics. Participants showed a great improvement after the Learning Session for both the trained mimetics and newly introduced mimetics, suggesting that participants successfully learned the mimetics and the sound regularities both with and without the explicit introduction of the three phonological/morphological rules. Additionally, we also found that learners who were explicitly taught the three phonological/morphological rules showed a greater improvement than those who were not. Therefore, the explicit introduction of the sound regularities is more effective in the current methodology. We also found that the proposed methodology is effective regardless of learners’ proficiency in Japanese. While advanced learners overall acquired more mimetics than beginning learners, beginning learners showed a greater improvement than advanced learners. These results suggest that teaching mimetics does not need to be limited to advanced learners (as it often is in Japanese language classrooms) but it should be encouraged for learners at all levels

in press) Modeling of Signaling Pathways for Endocrine Disruptors, BioSystems

Abstract The so called endocrine disruptors have become an important working hypothesis for a wide range of toxicology researchers. This hypothesis has also attracted those who have worked on designer estrogens or selective estrogen receptor modulators. Already numbers of substances have been identified as such chemicals, but there remain a large number of chemicals waiting to be tested for their endocrine modulating capabilities. Because of the time and costs required for wet lab tests, it is unrealistic to apply these kinds of tests to all such suspicious or probable chemicals. Thus some theoretical methods must be developed for this purpose. However the conventional QSAR (quantitative structure activity relationships) approach is of limited relevance to this problem, because these methods do not take detailed mechanisms of molecular interactions in biological systems into account. Thus we have developed a database complex system that enables one to trace molecular interactions triggered by interaction of receptors with xenobiotic chemicals. The main components of this database complex are a potential endocrine disruptor database, a receptor database, a cell signaling networks database, a transcription factor database, and an affinity binding database based on modes of actions