The notion that the form of a word bears an arbitrary relation to its meaning accounts only
partly for the attested relations between form and meaning in the languages of the world …

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We
review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an …

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 …

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 …

A work that reveals the profound links between the evolution, acquisition, and processing of
language, and proposes a new integrative framework for the language sciences. Language …

Humans live in a perceptual world. All of humanity's accomplishments, from agriculture to
space travel, depend on us being able to interact with the world through seeing, feeling …

In many everyday situations, our senses are bombarded by many different unisensory
signals at any given time. To gain the most veridical, and least variable, estimate of …

Sound symbolism refers to an association between phonemes and stimuli containing
particular perceptual and/or semantic elements (eg, objects of a certain size or shape) …

Abstract Abstract concepts (“freedom”) differ from concrete ones (“cat”), as they do not have
a bounded, identifiable, and clearly perceivable referent. The way in which abstract …

Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed
languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant …