Round or Spiky Words…

Do you sometimes find that the names for things just seem wrong? 

New research by Sidhu and colleagues may make it clearer why that happens.

The researchers report that “Sound symbolism refers to associations between language sounds (i.e., phonemes) and perceptual and/or semantic features.

One example is the maluma/takete effect: an association between certain phonemes (e.g., /m/, /u/) and roundness [as, for example, with maluma], and others (e.g., /k/, /ɪ/) and spikiness [as, for instance, with takete].

While this association has been demonstrated in laboratory tasks with nonword stimuli. . . . Here we examined whether the maluma/takete effect is attested in English, across a broad sample of words. . . . We found evidence that phonemes associated with roundness are more common in words referring to round objects, and phonemes associated with spikiness are more common in words referring to spiky objects.”

So we might think “soft cushion” and “hard bricks” are good examples.

David Sidhu, Chris Westbury, Geoff Hollis, and Penny Pexman.  “Sound Symbolism Shapes the English Language:  The Maluma/Takete Effect in English Nouns.”  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01883-3