Sound-Action Symbolism

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2021 Oct 1

PMID 34594278

Citations 7

Authors

Lari Vainio

Martti Vainio

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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 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.

Citing Articles

Front Is High and Back Is Low: Sound-Space Iconicity in Finnish.

Vainio L, Kilpelainen M, Wikstrom A, Vainio M Lang Speech. 2023; 67(4):1001-1019.

PMID: 38054421 PMC: 11583518. DOI: 10.1177/00238309231214176.

Embodied Processing at Six Linguistic Granularity Levels: A Consensus Paper.

Korner A, Castillo M, Drijvers L, Fischer M, Gunther F, Marelli M J Cogn. 2023; 6(1):60.

PMID: 37841668 PMC: 10573585. DOI: 10.5334/joc.231.

Neural basis of sound-symbolic pseudoword-shape correspondences.

Barany D, Lacey S, Matthews K, Nygaard L, Sathian K Neuropsychologia. 2023; 188:108657.

PMID: 37543139 PMC: 10529692. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108657.

Neural Basis Of Sound-Symbolic Pseudoword-Shape Correspondences.

Barany D, Lacey S, Matthews K, Nygaard L, Sathian K bioRxiv. 2023; .

PMID: 37425853 PMC: 10327042. DOI: 10.1101/2023.04.14.536865.

Sound-action symbolism in relation to precision manipulation and whole-hand grasp usage.

Vainio L, Kilpelainen M, Wikstrom A, Vainio M Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2023; 77(1):191-203.

PMID: 36847470 PMC: 10712208. DOI: 10.1177/17470218231160910.

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