Sound-Action Symbolism

Sound-Action Symbolism

Recent evidence has shown linkages between actions and segmental elements of speech. For instance, close-front vowels are sound symbolically associated with the precision grip, and front vowels are associated with forward-directed limb movements. The current review article presents a variety of such sound-action effects and proposes that they compose a category of sound symbolism that is based on grounding a conceptual knowledge of a referent in articulatory and manual action representations. In addition, the article proposes that even some widely known sound symbolism phenomena such as the sound-magnitude symbolism can be partially based on similar sensorimotor grounding. It is also discussed that meaning of suprasegmental speech elements in many instances is similarly grounded in body actions. Sound symbolism, prosody, and body gestures might originate from the same embodied mechanisms that enable a vivid and iconic expression of a meaning of a referent to the recipient.

INTRODUCTION

The core elements of language have evolved nearly exclusively in face-to-face interaction. Typically, in face-to-face communication signaling, a meaning of a referent to the interpreter occurs via verbal and non-verbal communication channels. Verbal signaling consists of spoken words, while non-verbal signaling can utilize oral (e.g., prosody and laughing) and non-oral (e.g., manual gestures, facial expressions, and body postures) forms. Unlike in non-verbal signaling, the relationship between a form of the verbal sign and its meaning has been considered to be essentially arbitrary. This view highlights that there is nothing inherent, for example, in the word dog to indicate what it represents. In contrast to this view, the idea of a non-arbitrary relationship between the verbal sign and its meaning has a long history dating back to Plato's Socratic dialogue Cratylus. For example, Peirce has emphasized that many linguistic signs do not comply with the rule of arbitrariness, but rather iconically represent the referent object, such as in onomatopoeia (e.g., knock, ring, and bang). Later studies have recognized a variety of consistent non-onomatopoeic associations between speech sounds and concepts in which the sound iconically represents some aspect of an object, such as its size or shape.

This review provides a new theoretical perspective on iconic properties of speech by emphasizing insights derived from views of embodied cognition. The view assumes that many concepts - in particular, those that have relevance to actions performed with body parts - are essentially grounded in action representations. This view is in line with the motor chauvinist perspective, according to which cognitive and perceptual functions have evolved to support motor behavior and hence, to a great degree, still operate in integration with motor processes. This review paper emphasizes that some sound symbolism phenomena can be partially based on conceptual grounding in motor processes. In support of this notion, the paper presents several recently observed sound symbolism effects that are based on an association between speech sound and action. As an example, front vowels are associated with forward-directed limb movements, and close-front vowels are associated with the precision grip.

The paper proposes that these sound-action symbolism effects are based on tight linkages between the motor processes of articulatory mouth movements and movements of other body parts - the hands in particular. This view holds that, for example, close-front vowels are sound symbolically associated with the precision grip because the meaning of this grip is represented within a motor network that integrates the motor program of the precision grasp with the motor program related to the articulatory gesture of a close-front vowel. In addition, the paper suggests that some commonly reported sound symbolism effects, such as the sound-magnitude effect, which have not been traditionally explained in terms of embodied accounts of cognition, can be also based on conceptual grounding in articulatory and manual sensorimotor processes. The paper further discusses that sound symbolism elements of spoken language have, to some degree, a common embodied origin with gestural and prosodic elements of communication; they are similarly, to a great extent, oriented to communicating ideas in a relatively iconic manner and are also grounded in action representations. However, before getting into the motor perspectives regarding iconic communicative signs, we discuss some basic principles concerning sound symbolism.