Perceptual links between sound and shape may unlock origins of spoken words:
Language scientists have discovered that this effect exists independently of the language that a person speaks or the writing system that they use, and it could be a clue to the origins of spoken words.
The research breakthrough came from exploring the 'bouba/kiki effect', where the majority of people, mostly Westerners in previous studies, intuitively match the shape on the left to the neologism 'bouba' and the form on the right to 'kiki'.
An international research team has conducted the largest cross-cultural test of the effect, surveying 917 speakers of 25 different languages representing nine language families and ten writing systems -- discovering that the effect occurs in societies around the world.
Publishing their findings in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the team, led by experts from the University of Birmingham and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, says that such iconic vocalisations may form a global basis for the creation of new words.
Co-author Dr Marcus Perlman, Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, commented: "Our findings suggest that most people around the world exhibit the bouba/kiki effect, including people who speak various languages, and regardless of the writing system they use."
"Our ancestors could have used links between speech sounds and visual properties to create some of the first spoken words -- and today, many thousands of years later, the perceived roundness of the English word 'balloon' may not be just a coincidence, after all."
Journal Reference:
Aleksandra Ćwiek, Susanne Fuchs, Christoph Draxler, et al. The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0390)
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday November 19 2021, @07:03AM (1 child)
Searching on the web for those words, I also found this article [nationalgeographic.com] which states that the effect not only exists for forms, but also for tastes.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @03:07PM
so what you're saying is the shapes that you can count ARE the shapes that you can taste.
you'll get kicked out of the tao club. or aut of the tau. smth.
I'm sorry, I make weird associations when I'm tired.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Friday November 19 2021, @01:52PM (2 children)
Whats the sound and shape of bukkake? Another low for SN... tsk tsk. :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @03:02PM
I'm gonna say something, and I'm only saying it because you asked me to: you're not being civil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @01:39PM
How did the subjects agree to participate in this quiz? Did They first bond with the quizzer on their shared love of round boobanies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:19PM
pffffft!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @09:13PM
Toil and trouble. Boiling water sounds the same all over the world, as do babbling brooks and other such things that might produce... bubbles! Also, bouba just looks like "boobs" in some kind of fake European language that people might use for fun so how much of a neologism is it, really?