Sound symbolism refers to an association between phonemes and stimuli containing particular perceptual and/or semantic elements (e.g., objects of a certain size or shape). Some of the best-known ...examples include the mil/mal effect (Sapir,
Journal of Experimental Psychology
,
12
, 225–239,
1929
) and the maluma/takete effect (
Köhler, 1929
). Interest in this topic has been on the rise within psychology, and studies have demonstrated that sound symbolic effects are relevant for many facets of cognition, including language, action, memory, and categorization. Sound symbolism also provides a mechanism by which words’ forms can have nonarbitrary, iconic relationships with their meanings. Although various proposals have been put forth for how phonetic features (both acoustic and articulatory) come to be associated with stimuli, there is as yet no generally agreed-upon explanation. We review five proposals: statistical co-occurrence between phonetic features and associated stimuli in the environment, a shared property among phonetic features and stimuli; neural factors; species-general, evolved associations; and patterns extracted from language. We identify a number of outstanding questions that need to be addressed on this topic and suggest next steps for the field.
We are fascinated by what words sound like. This fascination also drives us to search for meaning in sound - thereby contradicting the principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. ...Phonesthemes, onomatopoeia or rhyming compounds all share the property of carrying meaning by virtue of what they sound like, simply because language users establish an association between form and meaning. By drawing on a wide array of examples, ranging from conventionalized words and expressions to brand names and slogans, this book offers a comprehensive account of the role that sound symbolism and rhyme/alliteration plays in English, and by doing so, advocates a more relaxed view of the category 'morpheme' that is able to incorporate less regular word-formation processes.
Segmental Structure and Tone Kehrein, Wolfgang; Köhnlein, Bjö; Boersma, Paul ...
2017, 2017-12-18, Letnik:
552
eBook
Odprti dostop
The book series Linguistische Arbeiten (LA) publishes high-quality work in linguistics that addresses current issues in synchrony and diachrony, theoretically or empirically oriented.
Many languages use phonation types for phonemic or allophonic distinctions. This study examines the acoustic structure of the phonetic space for vowel phonations across languages. Our sample of ...eleven languages includes languages with contrastive modal, breathy, creaky, lax, tense, harsh, and/or pharyngealized phonations, and languages with allophonic nonmodal phonation on particular tones. In compiling and analyzing this sample we address related issues such as contrast vs. allophony, phonetic similarity across languages, and understanding complex contrasts of several multidimensional phonetic categories via data reduction. Based on extensive acoustic analysis, all of the languages' phonations were mapped into a single phonetic space, which exhibits dispersion (languages with more categories use more of the space). The space is largely two-dimensional, with dimensions that can be interpreted phonetically (e.g. dimension 2 is like a traditional breathy-to-creaky continuum) and also can be related back to the acoustic measures that structure them, thus indicating which acoustic measures are most important across languages.
The findings of research on Hakka dialect phonetics has mainly been published in the form of journal papers, dissertations and monographs. With "China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)" and ..."Duxiu Academic Search" as data sources, in this work, relevant research reports on the phonetics of Hakka dialect in the 30-year period from 1993 to 2023 were collected, which included 186 journal papers, 79 dissertations and 36 academic monograph. Firstly, bibliometric analyses were used by Citespace and VOSviewer on computer; then, EXCEL was employed for collecting and sorting out the general situation of the thesis and evaluating the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The goal was to investigate the general research on Hakka dialect phonetics in the past 30 years as comprehensively as possible, reveal the development trend of Hakka dialect phonetics objectively and scientifically to provide theoretical basis for the development of new research directions in the future, and provide data support for the development and utilization of Hakka dialect language conservation project resources.
Subsequent ROI analysis revealed that the classifier's performance did not reach significance on the conventional speech areas such as bilateral superior temporal areas and broca area.
An obituary for Hermann Josef Kunzel who died on 18 October 2022 is presented. In 1980, Hermann Kunzel joined the Scientific Development Department of the Federal Criminal Police Office ...(Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) in Wiesbaden. This is when I first met him. I was working on my PhD at the time, and the ICPhS in Utrecht in 1982 was my first big phonetics conference. I felt a bit lost, and then there was this friendly, smiling guy who showed up at breakfast and started talking to me when he saw my conference badge. The conversation, however, was not about phonetics - he had an idea for a present to take home to his wife and asked me if I knew a place where he could get it.
A field-based ultrasound and acoustic study of Iwaidja, an endangered Australian Aboriginal language, investigates the phonetic identity of nonnasal velar consonants in intervocalic position, where ...past work has proposed a +continuant vs. −continuant phonemic contrast. We analyze the putative contrast within a continuous phonetic space, defined by both acoustic and articulatory parameters, and find gradient variation: from more consonantal realizations, such as ɰ, to more vocalic realizations, such as a. The distribution of realizations across lexical items and speakers does not support the proposed phonemic contrast. This case illustrates how lenition that is both phonetically gradient and variable across speakers and words can give the illusion of a contextually restricted phonemic contrast.
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