Walking munu and jumping bibi: sound symbolism in (non)words produced by Turkish speakers

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Topel, Selin and Kanero, Junko and Saji, Noburo and Göksun, Tilbe (2022) Walking munu and jumping bibi: sound symbolism in (non)words produced by Turkish speakers. In: 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Cognitive Diversity, CogSci 2022, Toronto, Canada

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Abstract

Contrary to the classic idea of arbitrariness in mappings between words and meanings, many languages have words that mimic the sounds of their referents (onomatopoeia) and other subtler sound symbolic associations. However, our knowledge concerning the characteristics of sound-meaning links is still limited. Previous research mostly focused on languages with a large (e.g., Japanese) or limited (e.g., English) inventory of sound symbolic words. We conducted a word-production study with native speakers of Turkish, a language with a moderate amount of sound symbolic words, and examined links between sound properties (e.g., voiced vs. voiceless) and semantic dimensions (e.g., size, speed) in describing motions. Some of the sound-meaning links identified were the links found in Japanese and English samples in previous studies (Saji et al., 2019), whereas many seem to be specific to Turkish. This study provides initial evidence for language-specific sound symbolism in Turkish and links that are consistent across languages.
Item Type: Papers in Conference Proceedings
Uncontrolled Keywords: sound symbolism; iconicity; Turkish; locomotion; sound-meaning association
Divisions: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Depositing User: Junko Kanero
Date Deposited: 01 Oct 2022 22:57
Last Modified: 16 Apr 2023 17:04
URI: https://research.sabanciuniv.edu/id/eprint/44837

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