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Perception of sound symbolism in mimetic stimuli: The voicing contrast in Japanese and English
Nakata, Kotoko
Nakata, Kotoko
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Abstract
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.
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Date
2013-12-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Linguistics, Japanese language-- phonology, Sound symbolism