This paper attempts to improve the understanding of shape-sound symbolism by isolating the phonological features of the pseudo-words used in the experiments and the graphic features of the figures matched with them. In a first section, it analyses the classic maluma-takete effect from both an articulatory and acoustical point of view, showing that it is determined by several phonological features operating simultaneously. In a second section, two new experiments are presented to isolate, first, vowels and consonants and, second, the consonant features of [voicing], [manner of articulation], [nasality] and [place of articulation] in relation to the graphic features of {acuity}, {continuity}, {curvature}, {regularity}, and {density}. The main result is that each phonological feature shows a different pattern of correlations with the graphic features, determined by its subtle phono-articulatory and phono-acoustic structure.
1958Le symbolisme des voyelles: Significations des ‘i’. Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 51(3): 403–423 & 461–481.
Chastaing, M
1962La brillance des voyelles. Archivium Linguisticum 14(1): 1–13.
Chastaing, M
1964L’opposition des consonnes ‘sourdes’ aux consonnes ‘sonores’ a-t-elle une valeur symbolique?Vie et langage 147: 367–370.
Chastaing, M
1966Si les R étaient des L…Vie et langage 159: 311–317.
Davis, R
1961The fitness of names to drawings: A cross-cultural study in Tanganyika. British Journal of Psychology 52: 259–268.
D’Onofrio, A
2013Phonetic detail and dimensionality in sound-shape correspondences: Refining the bouba-kiki paradigm. Language and Speech 57(3): 367–393.
Fischer-Jørgensen, E
1967Perceptual dimensions of vowels. In To Honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, Vol. I, 667–671. The Hague: Mouton.
Fitch, W.T
2000The evolution of speech: A comparative review. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(7): 258–267.
Fox, C
1935An experimental study of naming. American Journal of Psychology 47: 545–578.
Grammont, M
1901Onomatopées et mots expressifs. Revue de Langues Romanes 44(4): 97–158.
Grammont, M
1933Traité de phonétique. Paris: Delagrave.
Hinton, L., Nichols, J. & Ohala, J.J
1994Introduction: Sound-symbolic processes. In Sound Symbolism, L. Hinton, J. Nichols & J.J. Ohala (eds), 1–12. Cambridge: CUP.
Holland, M. & Wertheimer, M
1964Some physiognomic aspects of naming, or maluma and takete revisited. Perceptual and Motor Skills 19: 111–117.
Jakobson, R. & Waugh, L
1979The Sound Shape of Language. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.
Johnson, R
1967Magnitude symbolism of English words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 6: 508–511.
Klank, L., Huang, Y. & Johnson, R
1971Determinants of success in matching word pairs in tests of phonetic symbolism. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 10: 140–148.
Köhler, W
1929[1947]Gestalt Psychology. New York NY: Liveright.
LaPolla, R
1994An experimental investigation into phonetic symbolism as it relates to Mandarin Chinese. In Sound Symbolism, L. Hinton, J. Nichols & J.J. Ohala (eds), 130–147. Cambridge: CUP.
Marks, L
1982Bright sneezes and dark coughs, loud sunlight and sift moonlight. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 8: 177–193.
Marks, L
1989On cross-modal similarity: The perceptual structure of pitch, loudness and brightness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 15: 586–602.
Newman, S
1933Further experiments on phonetic symbolism. American Journal of Psychology 45: 53–75.
Nielsen, A. & Rendall, D
2011The sound of round: Evaluating the sound-symbolic role of consonants in the classic takete-maluma phenomenon. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 65: 115–124.
Nobile, L
2008The grammatical monophonemes of standard Italian: A structural isomorphism between phonological and semantic oppositions?Cognitive Philology I(2). [URL]
2014L’iconicité phonologique dans les neurosciences cognitives et dans la tradition linguistique française. Le Français Moderne 82(1): 131–169.
Ohala, J.J
1984An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice. Phonetica 41: 1–16.
Peterfalvi, J.-M
1964Etude du symbolisme phonétique par l’appariement de mots sans signification à des figures. L’année psychologique 64(2): 411–432.
Peterfalvi, J.-M
1965Les recherches expérimentales sur le symbolisme phonétique. L’année Psychologique 65(2): 439–474.
Peterfalvi, J.-M
1970Recherches expérimentales sur le symbolisme phonétique. Paris: CNRS.
Ramachandran, V. & Hubbard, E
2001Synaesthesia – A window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(12): 3–34.
Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L
2007Language and mirror neurons. The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, G. Gaskell (ed.), 781–785. Oxford: OUP.
Saji, N., Akita, K., Imai, M., Kantartzis, K. & Kita, S
2013Cross-linguistically shared and language-specific sound symbolism for motion: An exploratory data mining approach. In
Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of Cognitive Science Society, Berlin, 31 July–03 August 2013
, 1253–1258. [URL]
Spence, C
2011Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention Perception Psychophysics 73: 971–995.
Taylor, I. & Taylor, M
1962Phonetic symbolism in four unrelated languages. Canadian Journal of Psychology 16: 344–356.
Thompson, P.D. & Estes, Z
2011Sound symbolic naming of novel objects is a graded function. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64(12): 2392–2404.
Westbury, C
2005Implicit sound symbolism in lexical access: Evidence from an interference task. Brain and Language 93: 10–19.
Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Akita, Kimi
2021. Phonation Types Matter in Sound Symbolism. Cognitive Science 45:5
Georgescu, Simona
2018. Las ‘creaciones expresivas’ del "Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico" en contexto románico e indoeuropeo. Un nuevo (y a la vez antiguo) enfoque. Revista de Filología Románica 35 ► pp. 119 ff.
Kawahara, Shigeto
2020. Sound symbolism and theoretical phonology. Language and Linguistics Compass 14:8
Kawahara, Shigeto & Gakuji Kumagai
2021. What voiced obstruents symbolically represent in Japanese: evidence from the Pokémon universe. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 37:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
2018. Introduction to gestural similarity in music. An application of category theory to the orchestra. Journal of Mathematics and Music 12:2 ► pp. 63 ff.
Occhino, Corrine
2017. An Introduction to Embodied Cognitive Phonology: Claw-5 Hand-shape Distribution in ASL and Libras. Complutense Journal of English Studies 25 ► pp. 69 ff.
Parker, Steve
2017. Sounding out Sonority. Language and Linguistics Compass 11:9
2020. Visual and Proprioceptive Perceptions Evoke Motion-Sound Symbolism: Different Acceleration Profiles Are Associated With Different Types of Consonants. Frontiers in Psychology 11
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.