Abstract
R. Tarte and his associates have obtained evidence for phonetic symbolism-like effects in which the critical meaning-bearing unit appears to be the vowel sound, with frequency of vocal resonance being especially implicated. In the present study, word norm data were analyzed with respect to hypotheses generated by Tarte’s work. Different monosyllabic words with single embedded vowels were examined with respect to normative data on potency, activity, evaluativeness, roundness, and size. “Phonetic” symbolism-like effects were observed for the potency and activity dimensions and, marginally, for roundness. It appears that, at least for some dimensions, meaning is in part conveyed by superficial nonsemantic aspects of the visually presented word. However, it is unlikely that the present results are due to vowel resonance frequency, because only the potency dimension differences were consistent with that hypothesis.
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Preparation of this paper was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant No. A7040. I would like to thank Michael O’Boyle for stimulating my interest in phonetic symbolism and Allan Paivio for kindly making his size norms available to me.
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Katz, A.N. Meaning conveyed by vowels: Some reanalyses of word norm data. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 24, 15–17 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330490
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330490