University Of Birmingham

Graduate Student, Psychology

Doctoral Researcher

Thesis Title: Universal & language specific sound symbolism

About

The study of the relationship between sound and meaning is of great interest to linguists, psychologists and anyone interested in the origin and acquisition of language. Since the influential publication by Saussure (1916/1983), the arbitrary relationship between the sound and meaning of words is considered to be one of the most important principles of language. However, it has also been noted that the sound and meaning of words can sometimes be systematically related. For example, Köhler (1929) pointed out that when presented with a curvy round shape and a spiky angular shape, one has the intuition that baluma is a better name for the former and takete is a better name for the latter This intuition is known as sound symbolism. In recent years, there is a rapidly growing interest in sound symbolism. It was found that sound symbolism was recognized across cultures (Davis, 1961) and even by young children (2 year olds) learning English (Maurer, 2006) and Japanese (Imai et al, 2008).  Imai et al. (2008) found that Japanese speaking 3-year olds are able to use sound symbolism to elarn verbs more effectively. These ideas form the broad basis for my interest in sound symbolism, and particularly whether children are sensitive to it.

Questions I hope to address during my PhD are:
• Whether sound symbolism is universal or language specific.
• Whether children can learn sound symbolic verbs more effectively that non-sound symbolic verbs.
• Whether children can use sound symbolism when learning novel verbs to remember a newly taught verb, more effectively that a newly taught, non-sound symbolic verb.
• Whether infants as young as 12-months old are sensitive to sound symbolism.
• What makes a word sound symbolic? Looking at the effect of consonants and vowels on the sound symbolic features of a word.
• How do we detect sound symbolism? Does articulating a sound symbolic word make us more sensitive to its meaning.

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