Many languages have a word class whose speech sounds are linked to sensory experiences (sound symbolism). Here we investigated sound symbolism in touch. Specifically, we performed psychophysical experiments to study the relationship between phonemes of Japanese sound symbolic words and emotional evaluations of objects in contact. Participants expressed the sensation obtained from touched materi...

Sound symbolism refers to associations between certain language sounds (i.e., phonemes) and perceptual and/or semantic properties. Crucially, the different of a phoneme do not appear be wholly independent. For instance, /i/ is associated with sharpness, smallness brightness. Previous work has shown that these properties are all related one another (Walker et al., 2012). This suggests higher ord...

Segmental properties of speech can convey sound symbolic meaning. This study presents two novel sound-meaning mappings using a choice reaction time paradigm in which participants have to select quickly one the vocal response alternatives based on predefined categories perceptual magnitude. The first showed that short distance between perceived objects facilitates initiation vowel [i] production...

The area of sound symbolism and onomatopoeia is an interesting area for studying the production and interpretation of neologisms in language. One question is whether neologisms are created haphazardly or governed by rules. Another question is how this can be studied. Of the approximately 60 000 words in the Swedish lexicon 1 500 have been judged to be sound symbolic (Abelin 1999). These were an...