Explorations of Sound Symbolism and Iconicity
Date
2019-09-17
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Abstract
Sound symbolism refers to the finding that individuals have biases to associate certain language sounds (i.e., phonemes) with certain perceptual and/or semantic features (see Lockwood & Dingemanse, 2015; Sidhu & Pexman, 2018a). An example of this is the association between the phoneme /i/ (as in heed) and smallness. This is of special interest to language because it can enable iconic relationships between form and meaning: instances in which a word’s form maps onto its meaning via resemblance. For instance, the word teeny contains a vowel associated with smallness, and refers to something small. Iconicity can also exist through direct resemblance, in which a form imitates the meaning to which it refers (e.g., bang, woosh). In Chapter 2 I synthesize the existing sound symbolism literature to arrive at five potential mechanisms that could give rise to the associations between phonemes and features. I also discuss as yet unanswered questions for the field and propose ways in which future research might answer these questions. In Chapter 3 I demonstrate a novel form of sound symbolism, namely that between phonemes and personality factors. In a departure from much of the previous literature, I conduct this investigation using real first names, allowing exploration of sound symbolism in existing language. Further, by demonstrating an association between phonemes and an abstract dimension, I widen the scope of sound symbolism, and provide a novel test case for the potential mechanisms discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 4 I turn my attention to iconicity and its benefit to language processing. I demonstrate that iconic words are processed faster on a lexical decision task as well as a phonological lexical decision task, compared to arbitrary words. I consider how this finding might fit into an existing model of word processing. Finally, in Chapter 5, I explore the effect of iconicity on the structure of the lexicon. I demonstrate that iconic words tend to have more unique meanings, and to have a greater amount of associated sensory experience. I discuss how these findings could shed light on the emergence of iconicity in the lexicon over time. Across these diverse studies I explore non-arbitrariness in language both at the level of individual phonemes and entire words. A running theme throughout this work is a consideration of the mechanisms underlying these phenomena, as well as an exploration of their relevance to broad, existing language.
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Keywords
sound symbolism, iconicity, language processing, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, psychology of langauge, linguistics
Citation
Sidhu, D. M. (2019). Explorations of Sound Symbolism and Iconicity (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.