Proceedings

A Universal Sound Symbolic Pattern: Prosodic Length being Positively Correlated to the meaning of 'Strength' 

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Abstract

Although arbitrary relation between sound and meaning (Sound Symbolism) has long been assumed to be one of fundamental properties of human languages, compiled evidence from various language families has led to the conclusion that its opposite, namely non-arbitrariness is also vital. However, categorizing non-arbitrariness as one of the fundamental properties of human languages faces two challenges: First, lack of universality, namely connections found in one language often cannot be applied to another language; Second, the issue of cheery-picking, namely the number of examples is often rare in a single language. Based on cross-linguistic corpus studies, I propose one universal sound symbolic pattern that Prosodic Length is positively correlated with the Meaning of 'Strength'.

Keywords: Sound Symbolism, Non-Arbitrariness, Mainstream American English, Standard Japanese, Anime

How to Cite:

Du, N., (2026) “A Universal Sound Symbolic Pattern: Prosodic Length being Positively Correlated to the meaning of 'Strength' ”, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/amphonology.3686