Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2022 Jan 3;377(1841):20200390. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0390. Epub 2021 Nov 15.
The effect-the association of the nonce word with a round shape and with a spiky shape-is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect across languages, with eliciting more congruent responses than . Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginally more likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape of the words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger for scripts that use rounder forms for and spikier forms for . These results confirm that the phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largely independent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstration to date that the effect is robust across cultures and writing systems. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)'.
这个非词与圆形和尖形的关联是语音与视觉属性之间的一种对应关系，这种对应关系可能对口语的进化具有深远的影响。然而，这种效应在不同文化中的稳健性以及正字法的影响存在争议。我们报告了一项在线实验，该实验测试了代表 9 种语言家族和 10 种书写系统的 25 种语言的说话者的这种效应。总的来说，我们在语言之间发现了强烈的证据，表明比 更能引起一致的反应。说罗马文字的参与者表现出这种效应的可能性略高，但对不同文字中单词的正字法形状的分析表明，对于使用圆形形式表示 和尖形形式表示 的文字，这种效应并不更强。这些结果证实，现象是语音和视觉形状之间的跨模态对应关系的基础，在很大程度上独立于正字法。它们提供了迄今为止最有力的证据，证明了这种效应在文化和书写系统中是稳健的。本文是主题为“语音调制：起源、机制与社会影响（第二部分）”的一部分。
