5 ms·

This isn't really a new discovery. It has been common knowledge in linguistics at least since the '70s that there is a universal tendency to use /i/-like sounds

This isn't really a new discovery. It has been common knowledge in linguistics at least since the '70s that there is a universal tendency to use /i/-like sounds in words that designate smallness and /o/ or /a/-like sounds in words for the opposite. (Note: Tendency. There are plenty of counter-examples, but the tendency is still there.) This is possibly linked to sound symbolism and has to do with how you position your tongue when you say those vowels. Possibly. There are also plenty of older studies using made-up words that show that people link /i/ sounds to sharpness and /o/~/a/ sounds to roundness. (E.g. show a group of subjects a triangle and a hexagon and ask them which one they think the word 'pirl' refers to. Then show another group the same shapes but use the word 'porl' instead.) Sound symbolism is super interesting. The Jabberwocky is a great example of how certain phonemes/syllables can affect our interpretation despite not being connected to each other in any immediately meaningful way.

aisofteng 10y ago
My interpretation of the significance of the study this article is about was that it is a very longitudinal study, demonstrating the patterns you mention across thousands of languages. Anecdotally speaking as a multilingual person, I've noticed some of the same patterns - but untested, anecdotal comments aren't worth much; I find it significant and interesting that (at least some of) these trends seem to hold across thousands of languages. This isn't my field, though - is my impression of the significance here correct? A second question: isn't it the currently held theory in linguistics that there is more or less a single "super parent" language - which my memory of my intro to linguistics class from ten years ago identifies as Proto-Indo European - and wouldn't that common linguistic ancestor provide a plausible alternative explanation for this common sound symbolism? A question tangentially related to the above: the sounds you mention are all vowels, which are easier for infants to make and which infants tend to learn to make first; it seems to stand to reason that sound symbolism tied to sounds made earliest by infants would be more likely to be unchanged over time. Is there anything that rules out this perspective? Building on this, I know that there are some patterns to the development of abstract reasoning in children; has there any work been done on correlating abstract reasoning development timescales with the development of phonetic production skills? Perhaps this sound symbolism has to do a parallel in the developmental timelines of these two?
- cafard 10y ago
  There was something called "Nostratic" hypothesized by some Russian linguists, I think. But broad though its spread is, I don't think that Proto-Indo European accounts even for all European languages--Hungarian, Basque, and Finnish being outliers. However, I am not a linguist.
tpeo 10y ago
Ugh! 'Pirl', 'pirl'! What a nasty tinny sort of word. But I do wonder how much of the similarity they're talking about here is accounted by phonoaesthetics, and how much of it might be simply due to some inevitable coincidence (like Zipf's law being applicable to gibberish texts). I mean, common concepts seem more likely to be referred to by short words, and there are only so many short words that can be formed with a given number of phonemes. Shouldn't some repetition and similarity be expected from that alone?
lgessler 10y ago
I'm not sure if you realize the great differences in generality between this study and previous studies in sound-meaning associations. First, this study drew from ~4,000 languages representing all the world's major language families (a scale I assume the /i/ vs. /u/ studies didn't achieve). Second, this study was sensitive to all associations in its methodology, as opposed to the high vs. low study, where the scientists came into the study asking a very narrow question (is there an association between high vowels and smallness and low vowels and bigness?). Here is the table from the study that summarizes associations that were very strongly attested in their corpus: http://i.imgur.com/iCOM8KQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/iCOM8KQ.jpg This study corroborates previous findings in sound-meaning association studies, but it also gives us a whole lot of new associations ('horn' and /k/, /r/? who knew?). Further, it investigates a previously uninvestigated (as far as I know) question: are there sounds that negatively correlate with certain meanings? (And it turns out there are.)

aisofteng 10y ago

My interpretation of the significance of the study this article is about was that it is a very longitudinal study, demonstrating the patterns you mention across thousands of languages. Anecdotally speaking as a multilingual person, I've noticed some of the same patterns - but untested, anecdotal comments aren't worth much; I find it significant and interesting that (at least some of) these trends seem to hold across thousands of languages. This isn't my field, though - is my impression of the significance here correct? A second question: isn't it the currently held theory in linguistics that there is more or less a single "super parent" language - which my memory of my intro to linguistics class from ten years ago identifies as Proto-Indo European - and wouldn't that common linguistic ancestor provide a plausible alternative explanation for this common sound symbolism? A question tangentially related to the above: the sounds you mention are all vowels, which are easier for infants to make and which infants tend to learn to make first; it seems to stand to reason that sound symbolism tied to sounds made earliest by infants would be more likely to be unchanged over time. Is there anything that rules out this perspective? Building on this, I know that there are some patterns to the development of abstract reasoning in children; has there any work been done on correlating abstract reasoning development timescales with the development of phonetic production skills? Perhaps this sound symbolism has to do a parallel in the developmental timelines of these two?

cafard 10y ago
There was something called "Nostratic" hypothesized by some Russian linguists, I think. But broad though its spread is, I don't think that Proto-Indo European accounts even for all European languages--Hungarian, Basque, and Finnish being outliers. However, I am not a linguist.

tpeo 10y ago

Ugh! 'Pirl', 'pirl'! What a nasty tinny sort of word. But I do wonder how much of the similarity they're talking about here is accounted by phonoaesthetics, and how much of it might be simply due to some inevitable coincidence (like Zipf's law being applicable to gibberish texts). I mean, common concepts seem more likely to be referred to by short words, and there are only so many short words that can be formed with a given number of phonemes. Shouldn't some repetition and similarity be expected from that alone?

lgessler 10y ago

I'm not sure if you realize the great differences in generality between this study and previous studies in sound-meaning associations. First, this study drew from ~4,000 languages representing all the world's major language families (a scale I assume the /i/ vs. /u/ studies didn't achieve). Second, this study was sensitive to all associations in its methodology, as opposed to the high vs. low study, where the scientists came into the study asking a very narrow question (is there an association between high vowels and smallness and low vowels and bigness?). Here is the table from the study that summarizes associations that were very strongly attested in their corpus: http://i.imgur.com/iCOM8KQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/iCOM8KQ.jpg This study corroborates previous findings in sound-meaning association studies, but it also gives us a whole lot of new associations ('horn' and /k/, /r/? who knew?). Further, it investigates a previously uninvestigated (as far as I know) question: are there sounds that negatively correlate with certain meanings? (And it turns out there are.)