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Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers

Contrary to the assumption of arbitrariness in modern linguistics, sound symbolism, which is the non-arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings, exists. Sound symbolism, including the “Bouba–Kiki” effect, implies the universality of such relationships; individuals from different cultural and...

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Autores principales: Wong, Li Shan, Kwon, Jinhwan, Zheng, Zane, Styles, Suzy J., Sakamoto, Maki, Kitada, Ryo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8965287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35369145
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830306
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author Wong, Li Shan
Kwon, Jinhwan
Zheng, Zane
Styles, Suzy J.
Sakamoto, Maki
Kitada, Ryo
author_facet Wong, Li Shan
Kwon, Jinhwan
Zheng, Zane
Styles, Suzy J.
Sakamoto, Maki
Kitada, Ryo
author_sort Wong, Li Shan
collection PubMed
description Contrary to the assumption of arbitrariness in modern linguistics, sound symbolism, which is the non-arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings, exists. Sound symbolism, including the “Bouba–Kiki” effect, implies the universality of such relationships; individuals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can similarly relate sound-symbolic words to referents, although the extent of these similarities remains to be fully understood. Here, we examined if subjects from different countries could similarly infer the surface texture properties from words that sound-symbolically represent hardness in Japanese. We prepared Japanese sound-symbolic words of which novelty was manipulated by a genetic algorithm (GA). Japanese speakers in Japan and English speakers in both Singapore and the United States rated these words based on surface texture properties (hardness, warmness, and roughness), as well as familiarity. The results show that hardness-related words were rated as harder and rougher than softness-related words, regardless of novelty and countries. Multivariate analyses of the ratings classified the hardness-related words along the hardness-softness dimension at over 80% accuracy, regardless of country. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the number of speech sounds /g/ and /k/ predicted the ratings of the surface texture properties in non-Japanese countries, suggesting a systematic relationship between phonetic features of a word and perceptual quality represented by the word across culturally and linguistically diverse samples.
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spelling pubmed-89652872022-03-31 Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers Wong, Li Shan Kwon, Jinhwan Zheng, Zane Styles, Suzy J. Sakamoto, Maki Kitada, Ryo Front Psychol Psychology Contrary to the assumption of arbitrariness in modern linguistics, sound symbolism, which is the non-arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings, exists. Sound symbolism, including the “Bouba–Kiki” effect, implies the universality of such relationships; individuals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can similarly relate sound-symbolic words to referents, although the extent of these similarities remains to be fully understood. Here, we examined if subjects from different countries could similarly infer the surface texture properties from words that sound-symbolically represent hardness in Japanese. We prepared Japanese sound-symbolic words of which novelty was manipulated by a genetic algorithm (GA). Japanese speakers in Japan and English speakers in both Singapore and the United States rated these words based on surface texture properties (hardness, warmness, and roughness), as well as familiarity. The results show that hardness-related words were rated as harder and rougher than softness-related words, regardless of novelty and countries. Multivariate analyses of the ratings classified the hardness-related words along the hardness-softness dimension at over 80% accuracy, regardless of country. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the number of speech sounds /g/ and /k/ predicted the ratings of the surface texture properties in non-Japanese countries, suggesting a systematic relationship between phonetic features of a word and perceptual quality represented by the word across culturally and linguistically diverse samples. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8965287/ /pubmed/35369145 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830306 Text en Copyright © 2022 Wong, Kwon, Zheng, Styles, Sakamoto and Kitada. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Wong, Li Shan
Kwon, Jinhwan
Zheng, Zane
Styles, Suzy J.
Sakamoto, Maki
Kitada, Ryo
Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title_full Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title_fullStr Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title_full_unstemmed Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title_short Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words for Representing the Hardness of an Object Are Judged Similarly by Japanese and English Speakers
title_sort japanese sound-symbolic words for representing the hardness of an object are judged similarly by japanese and english speakers
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8965287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35369145
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830306
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