University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2018 Oct;25(5):1619-1643. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1361-1.
Sound symbolism refers to an association between phonemes and stimuli containing particular perceptual and/or semantic elements (e.g., objects of a certain size or shape). Some of the best-known examples include the mil/mal effect (Sapir, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 225-239, 1929) and the maluma/takete effect (Köhler, 1929). Interest in this topic has been on the rise within psychology, and studies have demonstrated that sound symbolic effects are relevant for many facets of cognition, including language, action, memory, and categorization. Sound symbolism also provides a mechanism by which words' forms can have nonarbitrary, iconic relationships with their meanings. Although various proposals have been put forth for how phonetic features (both acoustic and articulatory) come to be associated with stimuli, there is as yet no generally agreed-upon explanation. We review five proposals: statistical co-occurrence between phonetic features and associated stimuli in the environment, a shared property among phonetic features and stimuli; neural factors; species-general, evolved associations; and patterns extracted from language. We identify a number of outstanding questions that need to be addressed on this topic and suggest next steps for the field.
声音象征主义是指音位与包含特定感知和/或语义元素的刺激之间的联系（例如，特定大小或形状的物体）。一些最著名的例子包括米尔/马尔效应（萨皮尔，《实验心理学杂志》，12,225-239,1929）和马拉马/塔凯特效应（科勒，1929）。声音象征主义在心理学中的研究兴趣日益浓厚，研究表明，声音象征效应与认知的许多方面都有关联，包括语言、行动、记忆和分类。声音象征主义还提供了一种机制，通过这种机制，单词的形式可以与其意义建立非任意的、象似的关系。尽管已经提出了各种关于语音特征（声学和发音）如何与刺激相关联的建议，但目前还没有一个普遍接受的解释。我们回顾了五个建议：环境中语音特征和相关刺激之间的统计共现、语音特征和刺激之间的共同属性；神经因素；物种一般的、进化的关联；以及从语言中提取的模式。我们确定了这个主题需要解决的一些悬而未决的问题，并为该领域提出了下一步的建议。
