The Ling Space | Do Sounds Carry Their Own Meanings? Onomatopoeia and Arbitrariness of the Sign @thelingspace | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 53 seconds ago
How much meaning is there just in sounds? How much are words alike across languages? In this week's episode, we talk about the arbitrariness of the sign: how our sounds don't have to connect to the meanings they do, how much cases like onomatopoeia serve as a counter to the random matching of words, and whether individual sounds or syllables carry their own semantic punch.
This is Topic #67!
This week's tag language: Māori!
Related videos:
Following the Signs: How Do We Learn Words? - youtu.be/Ci-5dVVvf0U
Last episode:
Desert Island Words: What Questions Can't You Ask? - youtu.be/01uH4XfJx3g
Other of our psycholinguistics videos:
Follow My Eyes: What Can Our Eyes Tell Us About Language? - youtu.be/uXx73W0uyCg
Walking the Garden Path: How Do We Interpret Sentences? - youtu.be/2A-FDN7-gyo
Prime Time: How Are Words Connected in Our Minds? - youtu.be/NGrxUp0pvVo
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-67
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Sources:
The initial discussion of the arbitrariness of the sign is from:
de Saussure, F. (1916). Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris, 1983.
There's a good discussion of the concepts on the Wikipedia page regarding the book:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics
If you are interested in cross-linguistic onomatopoeia and also very cute pictures, try:
http://soundimals.tumblr.com
http://chapmangamo.tumblr.com
The Dutch/Japanese ideophone study:
Lockwood, G., M. Dingemanse, & P. Hagoort (2016). Sound-symbolism boosts novel word learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
(Full paper available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000235)
The initial studies for the sound symbolism / phonesthetics with molmo and ikitik:
Köhler, W (1929). Gestalt Psychology. (We consulted the 1947 second edition.)
These shapes are often known as "kiki" and "bouba", from the following study:
Ramachandran, V. S., and E. M. Hubbard. (2001). Synaesthesia—a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8, 3–34.
There's a good and accessible overview of the state of this research in:
Lockwood, G. & M. Dingemanse. (2015). Iconicity in the Lab: A Review of Behavioral, Developmental, and Neuroimaging Research into Sound-Symbolism. Language Sciences, 1246. (full paper to be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01246)
An interesting article about product names and how they happen: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/famous-names
Looking forward to next week!
How much meaning is there just in sounds? How much are words alike across languages? In this week's episode, we talk about the arbitrariness of the sign: how our sounds don't have to connect to the meanings they do, how much cases like onomatopoeia serve as a counter to the random matching of words, and whether individual sounds or syllables carry their own semantic punch.
This is Topic #67!
This week's tag language: Māori!
Related videos:
Following the Signs: How Do We Learn Words? - youtu.be/Ci-5dVVvf0U
Last episode:
Desert Island Words: What Questions Can't You Ask? - youtu.be/01uH4XfJx3g
Other of our psycholinguistics videos:
Follow My Eyes: What Can Our Eyes Tell Us About Language? - youtu.be/uXx73W0uyCg
Walking the Garden Path: How Do We Interpret Sentences? - youtu.be/2A-FDN7-gyo
Prime Time: How Are Words Connected in Our Minds? - youtu.be/NGrxUp0pvVo
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-67
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Sources:
The initial discussion of the arbitrariness of the sign is from:
de Saussure, F. (1916). Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris, 1983.
There's a good discussion of the concepts on the Wikipedia page regarding the book:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics
If you are interested in cross-linguistic onomatopoeia and also very cute pictures, try:
http://soundimals.tumblr.com
http://chapmangamo.tumblr.com
The Dutch/Japanese ideophone study:
Lockwood, G., M. Dingemanse, & P. Hagoort (2016). Sound-symbolism boosts novel word learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
(Full paper available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000235)
The initial studies for the sound symbolism / phonesthetics with molmo and ikitik:
Köhler, W (1929). Gestalt Psychology. (We consulted the 1947 second edition.)
These shapes are often known as "kiki" and "bouba", from the following study:
Ramachandran, V. S., and E. M. Hubbard. (2001). Synaesthesia—a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8, 3–34.
There's a good and accessible overview of the state of this research in:
Lockwood, G. & M. Dingemanse. (2015). Iconicity in the Lab: A Review of Behavioral, Developmental, and Neuroimaging Research into Sound-Symbolism. Language Sciences, 1246. (full paper to be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01246)
An interesting article about product names and how they happen: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/famous-names
Looking forward to next week!
