Experimental and cross-linguistic evidence suggests that certain speech sounds are
associated with size, especially high front vowels with 'small'and low back vowels with …

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt: Although the sound-meaning relationship is
often arbitrary (Saussure 1916), cases exist in which some sounds correspond to certain …

Why do we perceive bass voices as “thick”? Owing to a “mediated association” with “thick
people and animals [who] are usually loud and resonant”, or owing to some “subtle inter …

The relationship between meanings of words and their sound shapes is to a large extent
arbitrary, but it is well known that languages exhibit sound symbolism effects violating …

The notion that linguistic forms and meanings are related only by convention and not by any
direct relationship between sounds and semantic concepts is a foundational principle of …

It is widely assumed that one of the fundamental properties of spoken language is the
arbitrary relation between sound and meaning. Some exceptions in the form of nonarbitrary …

Although the arbitrariness of language has been considered one of its defining features,
studies have demonstrated that certain phonemes tend to be associated with certain kinds of …

Two lexical characteristics that have emerged as relevant predictors of spoken word
processing are word frequency and neighborhood density. Word frequencyis the number of …

Sound symbolism refers to associations between language sounds (ie, phonemes) and
perceptual and/or semantic features. One example is the maluma/takete effect: an …

Drawing on data from a sample of 111 languages, this study examines whether certain
segments occur with a higher frequency in terms for 'nose','lip', and 'tooth'than would be …