File Download
Links for fulltext
(May Require Subscription)
- Publisher Website: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204270
- Scopus: eid_2-s2.0-85057625604
- PMID: 30513090
- WOS: WOS:000452204800003
- Find via
Supplementary
- Citations:
- Appears in Collections:
Article: Are tones in the expressive lexicon iconic? Evidence from three Chinese languages
Title | Are tones in the expressive lexicon iconic? Evidence from three Chinese languages |
---|---|
Authors | |
Keywords | female Hong Kong human human experiment infant |
Issue Date | 2018 |
Publisher | Public Library of Science. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.plosone.org/home.action |
Citation | PLoS One, 2018, v. 13 n. 12, p. article no. e0204270 How to Cite? |
Abstract | Recent advances in the literature have focused on sketching phonosemantic mappings of imitative or iconic utterances by relying on vowels and consonants, leaving the suprasegmental information unexplored. To begin bridging this gap, this study looks at the interaction of lexical tone and iconicity by comparing sound symbolic (i.e., mimetic, expressive, ideophonic) strata and general (i.e., arbitrary, prosaic, non-iconic) strata from three Chinese languages (Mandarin, Taiwanese Southern Min, Hong Kong Cantonese) using corpus-based means. For all three languages the distribution of tones in the sound symbolic strata are skewed so that the majority of syllables are largely confined to two tonal categories per language, one of which is high level, while the general strata exhibit no such tonal bias. These results indicate that phonological systematicity at the prosodic level might play an important role in demarcating an iconic class of words. This cross-linguistic tendency towards high tone mappings may be derived from phonotactic strategies to facilitate prosodic foregrounding of iconic utterances as well as an embodiment of expressive voice and marked pitch use like that of Infant Directed Speech. |
Persistent Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/278846 |
ISSN | 2023 Impact Factor: 2.9 2023 SCImago Journal Rankings: 0.839 |
PubMed Central ID | |
ISI Accession Number ID |
DC Field | Value | Language |
---|---|---|
dc.contributor.author | THOMPSON, AL | - |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-10-21T02:15:07Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2019-10-21T02:15:07Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 2018 | - |
dc.identifier.citation | PLoS One, 2018, v. 13 n. 12, p. article no. e0204270 | - |
dc.identifier.issn | 1932-6203 | - |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/278846 | - |
dc.description.abstract | Recent advances in the literature have focused on sketching phonosemantic mappings of imitative or iconic utterances by relying on vowels and consonants, leaving the suprasegmental information unexplored. To begin bridging this gap, this study looks at the interaction of lexical tone and iconicity by comparing sound symbolic (i.e., mimetic, expressive, ideophonic) strata and general (i.e., arbitrary, prosaic, non-iconic) strata from three Chinese languages (Mandarin, Taiwanese Southern Min, Hong Kong Cantonese) using corpus-based means. For all three languages the distribution of tones in the sound symbolic strata are skewed so that the majority of syllables are largely confined to two tonal categories per language, one of which is high level, while the general strata exhibit no such tonal bias. These results indicate that phonological systematicity at the prosodic level might play an important role in demarcating an iconic class of words. This cross-linguistic tendency towards high tone mappings may be derived from phonotactic strategies to facilitate prosodic foregrounding of iconic utterances as well as an embodiment of expressive voice and marked pitch use like that of Infant Directed Speech. | - |
dc.language | eng | - |
dc.publisher | Public Library of Science. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.plosone.org/home.action | - |
dc.relation.ispartof | PLoS ONE | - |
dc.rights | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. | - |
dc.subject | female | - |
dc.subject | Hong Kong | - |
dc.subject | human | - |
dc.subject | human experiment | - |
dc.subject | infant | - |
dc.title | Are tones in the expressive lexicon iconic? Evidence from three Chinese languages | - |
dc.type | Article | - |
dc.description.nature | published_or_final_version | - |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0204270 | - |
dc.identifier.pmid | 30513090 | - |
dc.identifier.pmcid | PMC6279048 | - |
dc.identifier.scopus | eid_2-s2.0-85057625604 | - |
dc.identifier.hkuros | 308081 | - |
dc.identifier.volume | 13 | - |
dc.identifier.issue | 12 | - |
dc.identifier.spage | article no. e0204270 | - |
dc.identifier.epage | article no. e0204270 | - |
dc.identifier.isi | WOS:000452204800003 | - |
dc.publisher.place | United States | - |
dc.identifier.issnl | 1932-6203 | - |