Sonority and shape
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2012/05/0018/000224Keywords:
sonority scale, sound symbolism, kiki-bouba effectAbstract
The current study investigates whether the sonority scale can linearly predict the roundness of a phoneme as a visual attribute. The results revealed that for vowels, it is the underlying roundness feature, not sonority, that predicts visual roundness. For consonants, however, the ranking generally follows the sonority scale, with the exception that voiceless fricatives ranked relatively higher than voiced fricatives and voiced stops.
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