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Sound symbolic naming of novel objects is a graded function
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Thompson, Patrick D. and Estes, Zachary (2011) Sound symbolic naming of novel objects is a graded function. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 64 (No. 12). pp. 2392-2404. doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.605898
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2011.605898
Abstract
Although linguistic traditions of the last century assumed that there is no link between sound and meaning (i.e., arbitrariness), recent research has established a nonarbitrary relation between sound and meaning (i.e., sound symbolism). For example, some sounds (e.g., /u/ as in took) suggest bigness whereas others (e.g., /i/ as in tiny) suggest smallness. We tested whether sound symbolism only marks contrasts (e.g., small versus big things) or whether it marks object properties in a graded manner (e.g., small, medium, and large things). In two experiments, participants viewed novel objects (i.e., greebles) of varying size and chose the most appropriate name for each object from a list of visually or auditorily presented nonwords that varied incrementally in the number of “large” and “small” phonemes. For instance, “wodolo” contains all large-sounding phonemes, whereas “kitete” contains all small-sounding phonemes. Participants' choices revealed a graded relationship between sound and size: The size of the object linearly predicted the number of large-sounding phonemes in its preferred name. That is, small, medium, and large objects elicited names with increasing numbers of large-sounding phonemes. The results are discussed in relation to cross-modal processing, gesture, and vocal pitch.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Psychology | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology | ||||
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||
| ISSN: | 1747-0218 | ||||
| Official Date: | 2011 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Vol. 64 | ||||
| Number: | No. 12 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 2392-2404 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/17470218.2011.605898 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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