Sound symbolism shapes the English language: The maluma/takete effect in English nouns

Sex-Biased Sound Symbolism in English-Language First Names

Sexual selection has resulted in sex-based size dimorphism in many mammals, including humans. In Western societies, average to taller stature men and comparatively shorter, slimmer women have higher reproductive success and are typically considered more attractive. This size dimorphism also extends to vocalisations in many species, again including humans, with larger individuals exhibiting lowe...

the most important demotivating factors among efl teachers in private english language institutes in mashhad

just as motivation is important in sla research, demotivation constitutes an important factor, too. there are many studies done on demotivation and burnout of teachers. many of these studies have been conducted on one or two aspects of english instruction. consequently, there are few studies which have been done on more than two aspects of english teaching. the aim of this study is to find out ...

Japanese Sound-Symbolism Facilitates Word Learning in English-Speaking Children

Sound-symbolism is the nonarbitrary link between the sound and meaning of a word. Japanesespeaking children performed better in a verb generalization task when they were taught novel sound-symbolic verbs, created based on existing Japanese sound-symbolic words, than novel nonsound-symbolic verbs (Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, 2008). A question remained as to whether the Japanese children had pic...

Hearing mouth shapes: Sound symbolism and the reverse McGurk effect

In their recent article, Sweeny, Guzman-Martinez, Ortega, Grabowecky, and Suzuki (2012) demonstrate that heard speech sounds modulate the perceived shape of briefly presented visual stimuli. Ovals, whose aspect ratio (relating width to height) varied on a trial-by-trial basis, were rated as looking wider when a /woo/ sound was presented, and as taller when a /wee/ sound was presented instead. O...

English Nouns English Coarse English Verbs English Adjectives