The sound of size revisited

Elsen, Hilke; Németh, Renáta and Kovács, László (2021): The sound of size revisited. New insights from a German-Hungarian comparative study on sound symbolism. In: Language Sciences, Vol. 85, No. 101360

Abstract

Languages consistently display sound symbolic effects. In our study we expand size-related sound symbolic research to German and Hungarian, languages with both rounded and unrounded high front vowels as well as/ø/, so that we can separate the effect of lip rounding and vowel backness. Our subjects had to rate artificial words with CVCVCV structure. For analysis we used crossed random effect models in a way that is novel in this field. Results confirm previous findings: voiced consonants and back vowels are perceived to be larger. Additionally, we show that lip rounding increases size.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 1 > German Studies
• Subjects: 400 Language > 430 German and related languages
• Language: English