Laing Catherine, Khattab Ghada, Sloggett Shayne, Keren-Portnoy Tamar
Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, UK.
School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
J Child Lang. 2025 Jul;52(4):739-761. doi: 10.1017/S0305000921000799. Epub 2024 Oct 14.
Six-month-olds infer object size based on pitch: they map high-pitched vowels onto smaller objects and low-pitched vowels onto larger objects (Peña et al., 2011). The 'sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis' (Imai & Kita, 2014) proposes that this may support understanding of word-meaning correspondences; by drawing on iconic pairings between linguistic cues and corresponding referents (e.g., higher pitch for smaller objects), infants develop understanding of word-referent associations. Here we analyse mother-child interactions, testing whether sound-symbolic pitch-size correspondences occur in infant-directed speech. 40 dyads engaged in (semi-)naturalistic interaction around picture books containing images of toys of varying sizes. We compare mothers' pitch when referring to small versus large toys, analysing i) actual size (bigger vs. smaller toys); ii) relative toy size congruence (i.e., congruent vs. incongruent with real-world expectation); and iii) transparency of the test paradigm as regards its focus on size contrastiveness (non-transparent, moderately transparent, highly transparent) to observe the nuances of size sound symbolism in infant-directed speech.
6个月大的婴儿会根据音高推断物体大小：他们将高音元音与较小的物体对应，将低音元音与较大的物体对应（佩尼亚等人，2011年）。“语音象征引导假设”（今井和北田，2014年）提出，这可能有助于理解词义对应关系；通过利用语言线索与相应指称对象之间的象似配对（例如，较小物体对应较高音高），婴儿逐渐理解词与指称对象的关联。在此，我们分析母婴互动，测试语音象征的音高-大小对应关系是否出现在面向婴儿的言语中。40对母婴围绕包含不同大小玩具图片的绘本进行（半）自然互动。我们比较母亲在提及小玩具和大玩具时的音高，分析：i）实际大小（较大玩具与较小玩具）；ii）玩具相对大小的一致性（即与现实世界预期一致或不一致）；iii）测试范式在关注大小对比方面的透明度（不透明、适度透明、高度透明），以观察面向婴儿言语中大小语音象征的细微差别。
