The role of valence and arousal for phonological iconicity in the lexicon of German

A Cross-Validation Study Using Pseudoword Ratings

Bibliographic Data

ID7149934
AuthorsDavid Schmidtke (0000-0002-9788-0088, University of Kassel), Markus Conrad (0000-0003-1335-437X, Universidad de La Laguna, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume39
Issue7
Pages1493-1514
Publication date2025-10-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCognition & Emotion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-9931 • E-ISSN: 1464-0600
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02699931.2024.2353775
PMID38773881
OpenAlexW4398215964
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited102

The notion of sound symbolism receives increasing interest in psycholinguistics. Recent research - including empirical effects of affective phonological iconicity on language processing (Adelman et al., 2018; Conrad et al., 2022) - suggested language codes affective meaning at a basic phonological level using specific phonemes as sublexical markers of emotion. Here, in a series of 8 rating-experiments, we investigate the sensitivity of language users to assumed affectively-iconic systematic distribution patterns of phonemes across the German vocabulary:After computing sublexical-affective-values (SAV) concerning valence and arousal for the entire German phoneme inventory according to occurrences of syllabic onsets, nuclei and codas in a large-scale affective normative lexical database, we constructed pseudoword material differing in SAV to test for subjective affective impressions.Results support affective iconicity as affective ratings mirrored sound-to-meaning correspondences in the lexical database. Varying SAV of otherwise semantically meaningless pseudowords altered affective impressions: Higher arousal was consistently assigned to pseudowords made of syllabic constituents more often used in high-arousal words - contrasted by less straightforward effects of valence SAV. Further disentangling specific differential effects of the two highly-related affective dimensions valence and arousal, our data clearly suggest arousal, rather than valence, as the relevant dimension driving affective iconicity effects

Arousal · Audiology · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · German · Iconicity · Lexicon · Linguistics · Pseudoword · Categorization, perception, and language · Chemistry · Color perception and design · Medicine · Multisensory perception and integration · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology