scholarly journals The influence of dialect in sound symbolic size perception

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Andrew Shibata
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Referent Object

Prior research on sound symbolism and referent object size establishes that words with front vowels are perceived to refer to smaller objects than do back vowels (Ohala 1997; Klink 2000). Some dialects of American English exhibit vowel movement along the front-back axis which may influence perceived object size. This study focuses on California English /u/-fronting (Hinton et al. 1987) and predicts that shifting from a standardly back vowel [u] to a more front vowel [ʉ] is paired with a shift from a large perceived object size to a smaller perceived object size. This paper describes two experiments in which participants either silently read (reading task) or listened (listening task) to stimulus words and rated perceived object size. California English speakers in the reading task experiment perceived words with /u/ to be smaller than did non-California English speakers. This result suggests that sound symbolic perception is sensitive to fine phonetic variability due to a person’s dialect.

scholarly journals Are Tims hot and Toms not?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Hartung
Keyword(s):  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Functional Feature ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Gender Group ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
The Relationship

Sound symbolism – the idea that there are motivated links between the sound of a word and its meaning has been established to be an existing phenomenon across different languages. Especially size sound symbolism seems to be a functional feature in many languages meaning that different types of vowels in words are associated with different physical size. Words with front vowels (e.g. little, tiny) are more likely to be used to indicate small physical size whereas words with back vowels (e.g. humungous, huge) are more likely to indicate large physical size. Because physical size plays an important role in ratings of attractiveness, we tested whether vowels in first names can influence how attractive the bearer of the name is perceived. In our experiment, participants saw faces paired with popular first names and rated the attractiveness of the depicted person. Masculine names were paired with pictures of men and feminine names with pictures of women. The names either contained a front or back vowel in the accented syllable and were within gender group randomly paired with pictures. We found that female raters preferred faces paired with back vowel names while male raters preferred faces paired with front vowel names, showing that the rater's gender – far more than the gender of the depicted person – determined the relationship between vowel quality and perceived attractiveness of faces. Our results confirm the role of sound symbolism in perception of attractiveness.

scholarly journals ADVERTISING BRANDS BY MEANS OF SOUNDS SYMBOLISM: THE INFLUENCE OF VOWELS ON PERCEIVED BRAND CHARACTERISTICS

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Catalina Duduciuc
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Semantic Differential ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Applied Social Psychology ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
And Performance

The aim of this study is to test the influence of sound symbolism on perceived characteristics of a brand as well as to highlight the importance of applied social psychology to current practice of advertising. Previous research showed that the phonetic structure of brand name communicates its characteristics, i.e. it drives consumers to assess certain features and performance of the product. I assumed that when consumers encounter an unknown brand name, they automatically infer characteristics from the meaning conveyed by the sounds (e.g. phonemes). Therefore, I supposed that a brand name for a shampoo (artificially created on experimental purpose) containing back vowel is evaluated better by consumers when they compare it to another brand name with front vowels. Furthermore, for the accuracy of responses, I used the semantic differential scale to measure the differences between two brands in terms of certain attributes of product. To this end, fifty students (N=50) participated in a research based on questionnaire. As the results of the current research showed, the brand name with back vowel outnumbered the brand name with front vowel on two dimension, i.e. on brand activity and brand efficiency. The brand name containing front vowel was rated better when subjects evaluated the product in generally. Last, but not least, when it comes to convey meanings, the sound of back vowels [a] could be used more when marketers promote products that communicate its characteristics such as efficiency, velocity and health. The back vowel could be also assessed to products with larger packing or special sailing such as extra quantity. Meanwhile, the brand names with front vowels [ie] could be created for more expensive products with good quality, mainly addressed to men.

The articulation of /ɹ/ in New Zealand English

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Heyne ◽  
Xuan Wang ◽  
Donald Derrick ◽  
Kieran Dorreen ◽  
Kevin Watson
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
American English ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Linear Mixed Effects ◽  
Allophonic Variation ◽  
Variation Patterns ◽  
Curvature Index ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Speech Motor

This paper investigates the articulation of approximant /ɹ/ in New Zealand English (NZE), and tests whether the patterns documented for rhotic varieties of English hold in a non-rhotic dialect. Midsagittal ultrasound data for 62 speakers producing 13 tokens of /ɹ/ in various phonetic environments were categorized according to the taxonomy by Delattre & Freeman (1968), and semi-automatically traced and quantified using the AAA software (Articulate Instruments Ltd. 2012) and a Modified Curvature Index (MCI; Dawson, Tiede & Whalen 2016). Twenty-five NZE speakers produced tip-down /ɹ/ exclusively, 12 tip-up /ɹ/ exclusively, and 25 produced both, partially depending on context. Those speakers who produced both variants used the most tip-down /ɹ/ in front vowel contexts, the most tip-up /ɹ/ in back vowel contexts, and varying rates in low central vowel contexts. The NZE speakers produced tip-up /ɹ/ most often in word-initial position, followed by intervocalic, then coronal, and least often in velar contexts. The results indicate that the allophonic variation patterns of /ɹ/ in NZE are similar to those of American English (Mielke, Baker & Archangeli 2010, 2016). We show that MCI values can be used to facilitate /ɹ/ gesture classification; linear mixed-effects models fit on the MCI values of manually categorized tongue contours show significant differences between all but two of Delattre & Freeman's (1968) tongue types. Overall, the results support theories of modular speech motor control with articulation strategies evolving from local rather than global optimization processes, and a mechanical model of rhotic variation (see Stavness et al. 2012).

scholarly journals Preprint Are Tims hot and Toms not?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Klenovsak ◽  
Franziska Hartung ◽  
Luenya Santiago ◽  
Dietmar Zaefferer
Keyword(s):  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Functional Feature ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Gender Group ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
The Relationship

Sound symbolism – the idea that there are motivated links between the sound of a word and its meaning has been established to be an existing phenomenon across different languages. Especially size sound symbolism seems to be a functional feature in many languages meaning that different types of vowels in words are associated with different physical size. Words with front vowels (e.g. little, tiny) are more likely to be used to indicate small physical size whereas words with back vowels (e.g. humungous, huge) are more likely to indicate large physical size. Because physical size plays an important role in ratings of attractiveness, we tested whether vowels in first names can influence how attractive the bearer of the name is perceived. In our experiment, participants saw faces paired with popular first names and rated the attractiveness of the depicted person. Masculine names were paired with pictures of men and feminine names with pictures of women. The names either contained a front or back vowel in the accented syllable and were within gender group randomly paired with pictures. We found that female raters preferred faces paired with back vowel names while male raters preferred faces paired with front vowel names, showing that the rater's gender – far more than the gender of the depicted person – determined the relationship between vowel quality and perceived attractiveness of faces. Our results confirm the role of sound symbolism in perception of attractiveness.

Towards a gestural characterization of liquids: Evidence from Spanish and Russian

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Proctor
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Position Effects ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Target Locations ◽  
Syllable Position

AbstractThe production of intervocalic liquid consonants by five speakers of Spanish and four speakers of Russian was examined using ultrasound. Liquids in both languages were found to be united by a lower susceptibility to vocalic coarticulation than coronal obstruents produced in the same environments. Tongue body articulation in the Spanish lateral resembled that of a mid-front vowel; dorsal posture in the Spanish trill resembled that of a mid-back vowel. Tongue body articulation in Russian non-palatalized laterals resembled that of a mid-back vowel, and Russian non-palatalized trills were produced with a dorsal posture resembling that of a mid-central vowel.These results are consistent with the hypothesis that coronal liquid consonants consist of a consonant-like coronal component and an intrinsic vowel-like dorsal component (Delattre and Freeman, Linguistics 44: 29– 68, 1968; Sproat and Fujimura, Journal of Phonetics 21: 291–311, 1993). Liquid segments are modeled as recurrent stable constellations in which a tongue-tip gesture is coordinated with a tongue-body gesture (Browman and Goldstein, Gestural syllable position effects in American English, AIP Press, 1995). Differences between ‘clear’ and ‘pharyngealized’ liquids are attributed to differences in dorsal target locations. Rhotic allophony is argued to result from the interaction of articulatory and aerodynamic factors. Spanish liquid vocalization is modeled as lenition of tongue tip gestures, and Slavic liquid metathesis as a change in intergestural coupling relationships.

scholarly journals Similar frequency of the McGurk effect in large samples of native Mandarin Chinese and American English speakers

2015 ◽  
Vol 233 (9) ◽  
pp. 2581-2586 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Magnotti ◽  
Debshila Basu Mallick ◽  
Guo Feng ◽  
Bin Zhou ◽  
Wen Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
American English ◽  
Mcgurk Effect ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
American English Speakers

How to express evolution in English Pokémon names

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeto Kawahara ◽  
Jeff Moore
Keyword(s):  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
Lower Segment ◽  
Systematic Relationships

Abstract This paper contributes to the studies of sound symbolism, systematic relationships between sounds and meanings. Specifically, we build on a series of studies conducted within a research paradigm called “Pokémonastics,” which uses the Pokémon universe to explore sound symbolic patterns. Inspired by a study of existing English Pokémon names, two experiments were conducted in which English speakers were provided with pairs of pre-evolution and post-evolution Pokémon characters, the latter of which were larger. The participants were given two name choices whose members were systematically different in some phonological properties. The results show the following sound symbolic patterns to be productive: (1) names with higher segment counts are more likely to be associated with post-evolution characters than names with lower segment counts, (2) names containing [a] are more likely to be associated with post-evolution characters than names containing [i], (3) names containing [u] are more likely to be associated with post-evolution characters than names containing [i], and (4) names containing coronal consonants are more likely to be associated with post-evolution characters than names containing labial consonants. Overall, the current results suggest that phonological considerations come into play when English speakers name new fictional creatures. Implications of the current results for the theories of sound symbolism are discussed throughout the paper.

scholarly journals Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Monique T. Mills
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Interprofessional Education ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
American English ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
African American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
Literacy Outcomes ◽  
American English Speakers

Purpose African American English (AAE) speakers often face mismatches between home language and school language, coupled with negative attitudes toward AAE in the classroom. This forum, Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice, will help researchers, parents, and school-based practitioners communicate in ways that are synergistic, collaborative, and transparent to improve educational outcomes of AAE speakers. Method The forum includes a tutorial offering readers instructions on how to engage in community-based participatory research (Holt, 2021). Through two clinical focus articles, readers will recognize how AAE develops during the preschool years and is expressed across various linguistic contexts and elicitation tasks (Newkirk-Turner & Green, 2021) and identify markers of developmental language disorder within AAE from language samples analyzed in Computerized Language Analysis (Overton et al., 2021). Seven empirical articles employ such designs as quantitative (Byrd & Brown, 2021; Diehm & Hendricks, 2021; Hendricks & Jimenez, 2021; Maher et al., 2021; Mahurin-Smith et al., 2021), qualitative (Hamilton & DeThorne, 2021), and mixed methods (Mills et al., 2021). These articles will help readers identify ways in which AAE affects how teachers view its speakers' language skills and communicative practices and relates to its speakers' literacy outcomes. Conclusion The goal of the forum is to make a lasting contribution to the discipline with a concentrated focus on how to assess and address communicative variation in the U.S. classroom.

scholarly journals English and Portuguese consonant clusters: contrasts and challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Madureira
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Learning Model ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Vowel Epenthesis ◽  
Speech Learning Model ◽  
Speech Learning

ABSTRACT Consonant clusters occur both in Portuguese and English. However, clusters are more productive in English than in Portuguese and there are sequences which are only found in English.This study focuses on the contrasts between American English and Brazilian Portuguese consonant clusters and on three strategies Brazilian learners tend to apply when producing them: adding the high front vowel (epenthesis) between the consonants in the clusters, discarding consonants, or introducing phonetic changes. The relevance of introducing English clusters to Brazilian learners of English is pointed out and discussed under the framework of the Speech Learning Model (SLM).

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