The bouba/kiki effect—the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki
with a spiky shape—is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual …

Iconic words and signs are characterized by a perceived resemblance between aspects of
their form and aspects of their meaning. For example, in English, iconic words include peep …

Cross-modal integration between sound and texture is important to perception and action.
Here we show this has repercussions for the structure of spoken languages. We present a …

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 …

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

Abstract 1 While the relationships between sounds and meanings are generally arbitrary in
human 2 languages, we do observe cases in which systematic correspondences hold …

The widely cited frequency code hypothesis attempts to explain a diverse range of
communicative phenomena through the acoustic projection of body size. The set of …

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words,
but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic …

As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by
both genomic and extra-genomic evolution. Sharing methods and models between these …

This paper investigates the underlying cognitive processes of sound–color associations by
connecting perceptual evidence from research on cross-modal correspondences to sound …