A tripartite trans-modal relationship among sounds, shapes and emotions: A case of abrupt modulation Shigeto Kawahara (kawahara@rci.rutgers.edu) Linguistics Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ 08901, USA Kazuko Shinohara (k-shino@cc.tuat.ac.jp) Institute of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588, JAPAN Abstract exceptions. For example, Sapir found that English speakers tend to associate [a] (back and low vowels) with big objects and [i] (high front vowels) with small objects; however, there are lexical items such as big that go against this trend. Since Sapir’s work, the tendency to associate lower and backer vowels with bigger objects have been found in many other languages (e.g. Shinohara & Kawahara (2012) among many others). In short, the previous work on sound symbolism in natural languages has established that we can at least identify stochastic tendencies toward some connection between sounds and meanings (despite the fact that some lexical items may not strictly follow such connections) (Hinton et al., 1994). There is thus little doubt, albeit perhaps in non-categorical ways, that there are some associations between sounds and meanings. Moreover, these associations between sounds and meanings tend to make phonetic sense. For example, [a] is often considered to be larger than [i] in many different languages, and this association arises because [a] has wider opening of the mouth than [i] (Sapir, 1929; Shinohara & Kawahara, 2012). Alternatively, viewed from a (psycho)acoustic perspective, [a] involves lower second resonant frequency (F2) than [i], which would imply a larger resonator (Ohala, 1994). See also Shinohara & Kawahara (2012) for the comparison of these two theories of sound symbolism. The current project is a case study–and an extension–of the traditional investigation into sound symbolism (Hinton et al., 1994). Several studies have shown that certain sounds evoke images of particular shapes; for example, oral stop consonants are often associated with angular shapes, whereas sonorants (nasals, liquids, and glides) are associated with round shapes (Berlin, 2006; Kohler, 1947). Berlin (2006) attributes these associations to the similarities between abrupt acoustic amplitude modulation of stop consonants and abrupt change of the directions of lines, i.e., abrupt visual changes. In this study, we extend the stop-angular sound symbolic relation to the domain of emotions. Stops not only evoke the images of angular shapes, but are also associated with emotions that involve abrupt onsets. We further show that angular shapes themselves are associated with such emotions. Our three experiments thus establish a tripartite trans-modal symbolic relationship among three domains of cognition (sounds, shapes, and emotions). As an additional general implication, we argue that our experimental results support acoustic, rather than articulatory, bases of sound symbolism. Keywords: sound symbolism; stop consonants; sonorants; angularity; emotions; abrupt modulations; modularity; synesthesia Introduction A prevalent assumption in modern linguistics is the autonomy of semantics (meanings) from sounds. One of the Saussurian principles of languages suggests that there is no inherent connection between meanings and sounds. For example, there is no inherent reason why what we call [k h aet] is called in such a way. In fact, different languages call that animal by different names. Therefore, the argument goes, the sound-meaning relationship must be arbitrary. Saussure in fact raises this principle of arbitrariness as a first principle of natural languages (de Saussure, 1960). However, evidence for an opposing view—that there is some inherent connection between sounds and meanings— is also available, and proponents of this view date back to at least Cratylus in Plato (Harris & Taylor, 1989). Especially since the seminal experimental work by Sapir (1929), a substantial body of experimental work shows that sounds are often associated with particular meanings. This relationship, often referred to as sound symbolism, is usually not absolute, and comes with some lexical Figure 1: The roadmap of this paper. In the current project, we focus on the meanings of oral stop consonants (like [p, t, k]), which acoustically involve abrupt amplitude changes, as opposed to sonorants, which involve gradual amplitude changes (nasals, liquids, glides, like [n, l, r, j]) (see section 2 for the illustration of these phonetic concepts.). We show that these acoustic characteristics of stops are associated with angular shapes
['Shigeto Kawahara', 'Kazuko Shinohara']
A tripartite trans-modal relationship among sounds, shapes and emotions: A case of abrupt modulation