Skip to content
BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access May 22, 2019

Accounting for the stochastic nature of sound symbolism using Maximum Entropy model

  • Shigeto Kawahara EMAIL logo , Hironori Katsuda and Gakuji Kumagai
From the journal Open Linguistics

Abstract

Sound symbolism refers to stochastic and systematic associations between sounds and meanings. Sound symbolism has not received much serious attention in the generative phonology literature, perhaps because most if not all sound symbolic patterns are probabilistic. Building on the recent proposal to analyze sound symbolic patterns within a formal phonological framework (Alderete and Kochetov 2017), this paper shows that MaxEnt grammars allow us to model stochastic sound symbolic patterns in a very natural way. The analyses presented in the paper show that sound symbolic relationships can be modeled in the same way that we model phonological patterns. We suggest that there is nothing fundamental that prohibits formal phonologists from analyzing sound symbolic patterns, and that studying sound symbolism using a formal framework may open up a new, interesting research domain. The current study also reports two hitherto unnoticed cases of sound symbolism, thereby expanding the empirical scope of sound symbolic patterns in natural languages.

References

Akita, K. (2015), “Sound symbolism,” in Handbook of Pragmatics, Installment 2015, eds. J.-O. Östman, and J. Verschueren, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/hop.19.sou1Search in Google Scholar

Alderete, J., and Kochetov, A. (2017), “Integrating sound symbolism with core grammar: The case of expressive palatalization,” Language, 93, 731–766.10.1353/lan.2017.0056Search in Google Scholar

Berger, A. L., Della Pietra, S. A., and Della Pietra, V. J. (1996), “A maximum entropy approach to natural language processing,” Computational Linguistics, 22, 39–71.Search in Google Scholar

Berlin, B. (2006), “The first congress of ethonozoological nomenclature,” Journal of Royal Anthropological Institution, 12, 23–44.10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00271.xSearch in Google Scholar

Blasi, D., Wichman, S., Hammarström, H., Stadler, P. F., and Christianson, M. H. (2016), “Sound-meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages,” Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 113(39), 10818–10823.10.1073/pnas.1605782113Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, N., and Halle, M. (1968), The Sound Pattern of English, New York: Harper and Row.Search in Google Scholar

Coulter, K., and Coulter, R. A. (2010), “Small sounds, big deals: Phonetic symbolism effects in pricing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37(2), 315–328.10.1086/651241Search in Google Scholar

Daland, R. (2015), “Long words in maximum entropy phonotactic gammars,” Phonology, 32(3), 353–383.10.1017/S0952675715000251Search in Google Scholar

Diffloth, G. (1994), “i: big, a: small,” in Sound Symbolism, eds. L. Hinton, J. Nichols, and J. J. Ohala, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–114.Search in Google Scholar

Dingemanse, M. (2018), “Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones,” Glossa.10.5334/gjgl.444Search in Google Scholar

Dingemanse, M., Blasi, D. E., Lupyan, G., Christiansen, M. H., and Monaghan, P. (2015), “Arbitrariness, iconicity and systematicity in language,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(10), 603–615.10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.013Search in Google Scholar

D’Onofrio, A. (2014), “Phonetic detail and dimensionality in sound-shape correspondences: Refining the bouba-kiki paradigm,” Language and Speech, 57(3), 367–393.10.1177/0023830913507694Search in Google Scholar

Ernestus, M., and Baayen, H. (2003), “Predicting the unpredictable: Interpreting neutralized segments in Dutch,” Language, 79(1), 5–38.10.1353/lan.2003.0076Search in Google Scholar

Fort, M., Martin, A., and Peperkamp, S. (2015), “Consonants are more important than vowels in the bouba-kiki effect,” Language and Speech, 58, 247–266.10.1177/0023830914534951Search in Google Scholar

Goldwater, S., and Johnson, M. (2003), “Learning OT constraint rankings using a maximum entropy model,” Proceedings of the Workshop on Variation within Optimality Theory, pp. 111–120.Search in Google Scholar

Hall, K. C. (2009), A Probabilistic Model of Phonological Relationships from Contrast to Allophony, Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University.Search in Google Scholar

Hamano, S. (1986), The Sound-Symbolic System of Japanese, Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida.Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B. (2016), “Some remarks on linguistics, textsetting, and life,” Commencement ceremony lecture, Boston University, May 14.Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B. (2017), “Varieties of Noisy Harmonic Grammar,” Proocedings of AMP.10.3765/amp.v4i0.3997Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B., and Londe, Z. (2006), “Stochastic phonological knowledge: The case of Hungarian vowel harmony,” Phonology, 23, 59–104.10.1017/S0952675706000765Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B., and Wilson, C. (2008), “A Maximum Entropy model of phonotactics and phonotactic learning,” Linguistic Inquiry, 39, 379–440.10.1162/ling.2008.39.3.379Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B., Wilson, C., and Shisko, A. (2012), “Maxent grammars for the metrics of Shakespeare and Milton,” Language, 88(4), 691-731.10.1353/lan.2012.0089Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, B., Zuraw, K., Siptár, P., and Londe, Z. (2009), “Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony,” Language, 85(4), 822–863.10.1353/lan.0.0169Search in Google Scholar

Hinton, L., Nichols, J., and Ohala, J. (2006), Sound Symbolism, 2nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Hockett, C. (1959), “Animal “languages” and human language,” Human Biology, 31, 32–39.Search in Google Scholar

Jakobson, R. (1978), Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Jespersen, O. (1922), “Symbolic value of the vowel i,” in Linguistica: Selected Papers in English, French and German, Vol. 1, Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, pp. 283–30.Search in Google Scholar

Kawahara, S. (2017), Introducing phonetics through sound symbolism, Tokyo: Hitsuzi Syobo.10.21437/ISAPh.2018-4Search in Google Scholar

Kawahara, S. (2018), “Phonology and the orthography: The orthographic characterization of rendaku and Lyman’s Law,” Glossa, 3.10.5334/gjgl.368Search in Google Scholar

Kawahara, S., Noto, A., and Kumagai, G. (2018), “Sound symbolic patterns in Pokémon names,” Phonetica, 75(3), 219–244.10.1159/000484938Search in Google Scholar

Kawahara, S., and Shinohara, K. (2012), “A tripartite trans-modal relationship between sounds, shapes and emotions: A case of abrupt modulation,” Proceedings of CogSci, 2012, 569–574.Search in Google Scholar

Kochetov, A., and Alderete, J. (2011), “Scales and patterns of expressive palatalization: Experimental evidence from Japanese,” Canadian Journal of LInguistics, 56(3), 345–376.10.1017/S0008413100002048Search in Google Scholar

Köhler, W. (1947), Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology, New York: Liveright.Search in Google Scholar

Kubozono, H. (1999), Nihongo-no Onsei: Gendai Gengogaku Nyuumon 2 [Japanese Phonetics: An Introduction to Modern Linguisitcs 2], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Search in Google Scholar

Kumagai, G. (2019), “A sound-symbolic alternation to express cuteness and the orthographic Lyman’s Law in Japanese,” Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 39-7410.1515/jjl-2019-2004Search in Google Scholar

Kumagai, G., and Kawahara, S. (2018), “Stochastic phonological knowledge and word formation in Japanese,” Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan, 153, 57–83.Search in Google Scholar

Kumagai, G., and Kawahara, S. (2019), “Pokémon-no naduke-ni okeru boin-to yuuseisogaion-no kouka,” Gengo Kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan], 155.Search in Google Scholar

Legendre, G., Miyata, Y., and Smolensky, P. (1990a), “Harmonic Grammar – A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: An Application,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 884–891.Search in Google Scholar

Legendre, G., Miyata, Y., and Smolensky, P. (1990b), “Harmonic Grammar – A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: Theoretical foundations,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 388–395.Search in Google Scholar

Locke, J. (1689), An Essay concerning Human Understanding, London: MDCC.10.1093/oseo/instance.00018020Search in Google Scholar

Lockwood, G., and Dingemanse, M. (2015), “Iconicity in the lab: A review of behavioral, developmental, and neuroimaging research into sound-symbolism,” Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01246.10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01246Search in Google Scholar

Maurer, D., Pathman, T., and Mondloch, C. J. (2006), “The shape of boubas: Sound-shape correspondences in toddlers and adults,” Developmental Science, 9, 316–322.10.1111/j.1467-7687.2006.00495.xSearch in Google Scholar

McCarthy, J. J. (2008), Doing Optimality Theory, Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley.10.1002/9781444301182Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, J. J. (2010), “An introduction to Harmonic Serialism,” Language and Linguistic Compass, 4(10), 1001–1018.10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00240.xSearch in Google Scholar

McCarthy, J. J., and Prince, A. (1995), “Faithfulness and reduplicative identity,” in University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18, eds. J. Beckman, L. Walsh Dickey, and S. Urbanczyk, Amherst: GLSA, pp. 249–384.Search in Google Scholar

Moore-Cantwell, C., and Pater, J. (2016), “Gradient exceptionality in Maximum Entropy grammar with lexically specific constraints,” Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 15, 53–66.10.5565/rev/catjl.183Search in Google Scholar

Newman, S. (1933), “Further experiments on phonetic symbolism,” American Journal of Psychology, 45, 53–75.10.2307/1414186Search in Google Scholar

Nuckolls, J. B. (1999), “The case for sound symbolism,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 28, 225–252.10.1146/annurev.anthro.28.1.225Search in Google Scholar

Ohala, J. J. (1994), “The frequency code underlies the sound symbolic use of voice pitch,” in Sound Symbolism, eds. L. Hinton, J. Nichols, and J. J. Ohala, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 325–347.Search in Google Scholar

Pater, J. (2009), “Weighted constraints in generative linguistics,” Cognitive Science, 33, 999–1035.10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01047.xSearch in Google Scholar

Pater, J. (2016), “Universal grammar with weighted constraints,” in Harmonic Grammar and Harmonic Serialism, eds. J. J. McCarthy, and J. Pater, London: Equinox, pp. 1–46.Search in Google Scholar

Pierrehumbert, J. B. (2001), “Stochastic phonology,” GLOT, 5, 1–13.Search in Google Scholar

Prince, A., and Smolensky, P. (1993/2004), Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar, Malden and Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470759400Search in Google Scholar

Ramachandran, V. S., and Hubbard, E. M. (2001), “Synesthesia–A window into perception, thought, and language,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(12), 3–34.Search in Google Scholar

Sapir, E. (1929), “A study in phonetic symbolism,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 225–239.10.1037/h0070931Search in Google Scholar

Saussure, F. (1916), Cours de linguistique générale, Paris: Payot.Search in Google Scholar

Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (1986), “The representation of phonological information during speech production planning: Evidence from vowel errors in spontaneous speech,” Phonology Yearbook, 3, 117–149.10.1017/S0952675700000609Search in Google Scholar

Shaw, J., and Kawahara, S. (2018), “Predictability and phonology: Past, present & future,” Linguistics Vanguard, 4(S2).10.1515/lingvan-2018-0042Search in Google Scholar

Shih, S. S., Ackerman, J., Hermalin, N., Inkelas, S., and Kavitskaya, D. (2018), “Pokémonikers: A study of sound symbolism and Pokémon names,” Proceedings of LSA, 2018.10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4335Search in Google Scholar

Shinohara, K., and Kawahara, S. (2013), “The sound symbolic nature of Japanese maid names,” Proceedings of the 13th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, 13, 183–193.Search in Google Scholar

Shinohara, K., and Kawahara, S. (2016), “A cross-linguistic study of sound symbolism: The images of size,” in Proceedings of the Thirty Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society., Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp. 396–410.Search in Google Scholar

Sidhu, D., and Pexman, P. M. (2017), “Five mechanisms of sound symbolic association,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–25.Search in Google Scholar

Styles, S. J., and Gawne, L. (2017), “When does maluma/takete fail? Two key failures and a meta-analysis suggest that phonology and phonotactics matter,” i-Perception, pp. 1–17.10.1177/2041669517724807Search in Google Scholar

Suzuki, T. (1962), “Oninkookan to igibunka no kankei ni tsuite–iwayuru seidakuon tairitsu-o chuushin toshite,” Gengo Kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan], 42, 23–30.Search in Google Scholar

Svantesson, J.-O. (2017), “Sound symbolism: The role of word sound in meaning,” WIRE Cog Sci, e01441.10.1002/wcs.1441Search in Google Scholar

Tanaka, Y. (2017), The Sound pattern of Japanese surnames, Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Search in Google Scholar

Uemura, Y. (1965), “Onsei-no hyoushousei-ni tsuite [On the symbolic aspects of sounds],” in Gengo Seikatsu, Tokyo: Honami Shuppan, pp. 66–70.Search in Google Scholar

Ultan, R. (1978), “Size-sound symbolism,” in Universals of Human Language II: Phonology, ed. J. Greenberg, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 525–568.Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, C. (2006), “Learning phonology with substantive bias: An experimental and computational study of velar palatalization,” Cognitive Science, 30(5), 945–982.10.1207/s15516709cog0000_89Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, C. (2014), “Maximum entropy models,” Tutorial presentation, MIT.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, S., and Hay, J. (2002), “Fred and Trema: A phonological conspiracy,” in Gendered Practices in Language, eds. S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland, and Q. Zhang, Stanford: CSLI Publications, pp. 175–191.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, S., Hay, J., and Tessa, B. (2005), “Ladies first? Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy,” Linguistics, 43(3), 531–561.10.1515/ling.2005.43.3.531Search in Google Scholar

Zuraw, K. (2000), Patterned Exceptions in Phonology, Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Search in Google Scholar

Zuraw, K. (2013), “*Map constraints,” ms. UCLA.Search in Google Scholar

Zuraw, K., and Hayes, B. (2017), “Intersecting constraint familities: An argument for Harmonic Grammar,” Language, 93, 497–548.10.1353/lan.2017.0035Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2018-09-24
Accepted: 2019-01-21
Published Online: 2019-05-22

© 2019 Shigeto Kawahara et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.

Downloaded on 25.4.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2019-0007/html
Scroll to top button