Ancient writers, including Socrates and the Upanishads, argued that sibilants are associated with the notions of wind, air and sky. From modern perspectives, these statements can be understood as an assertion about sound symbolism, i.e., systematic connections between sounds and meanings. Inspired by these writers, this article reports on an experiment that tests a sound symbolic value of sibilants. The experiment is a case study situated within the Pokémonastics research paradigm, in which the researchers explore the sound symbolic patterns in natural languages using Pokémon names. The current experiment shows that when presented with pairs of a flying-type Pokémon character and a normal-type Pokémon character, Japanese speakers are more likely to associate the flying-type Pokémons with names that contain sibilants than those names that do not contain sibilants. As was pointed out by Socrates, the sound symbolic connection identified in the experiment is likely to be grounded in the articulatory properties of sibilants – the large amount of oral airflow that accompanies the production of sibilants. Various implications of the current experiment for the sound symbolism research are discussed throughout the article.

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Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir o papel da iconicidade como fenômeno linguístico e trazer evidências empíricas sobre a necessidade dessa discussão. Para tanto, investigamos se falantes de Português Brasileiro (PB) constroem as mesmas relações entre fonemas e categorias perceptuais que falantes de outras línguas, um fenômeno descrito como simbolismo sonoro (STYLES e GAWNE, 2017). Isso foi feito por meio da replicação do experimento Takete-Maluma (KÖHLER, 1929) e uma variação desse teste que tem como objetivo avaliar o papel das consoantes e das vogais na construção do simbolismo sonoro (NIELSEN e RENDALL, 2011). Nossos resultados revelam que falantes nativos de PB fazem a mesma relação entre som e formas geométricas que falantes de outras línguas. Com esses resultados, nosso artigo ressalta a necessidade de integrarmos a iconicidade em modelos que pretendam dar conta do fenômeno da linguagem e a importância de mais estudos experimentais sobre simbolismo sonoro no PB.

Several studies in linguistics and related disciplines have been extensively exploring sound symbolism, systematic associations between sounds and meanings. Against this theoretical development, research on Pokémon names has shed new light on cross-linguistic similarities and differences in sound symbolic patterns, using similar experimental stimuli across different target languages. A recent experimental study has demonstrated that Brazilian Portuguese speakers sound-symbolically signal evolution when naming Pokémon characters: post-evolution Pokémon characters tend to receive longer names with more voiced obstruents, while preevolution characters tend to receive shorter names with fewer voiced obstruents. Other recent studies showed that in Japanese and English, sound symbolism can also signal differences in Pokémon type: evil-looking characters tend to be associated with voiced obstruents, while flyingtype characters tend to have names with sibilants. Integrating the insights offered by these two lines of previous studies, the current paper examines whether Brazilian Portuguese speakers are sensitive to these type-related sound symbolic associations. To improve upon previous studies, we used a free-naming task in order to give participants freedom to create new names. This experiment corroborated the associations between voiced obstruents and evil-type characters, but not the association between sibilants and flying-type characters. A follow-up experiment with a forced-choice paradigm, the same method used in earlier work, also failed to reveal systematic connections between sibilants and flying-type characters. These results indicate that this association may not be universal, contrary to the claim made in previous studies.

Neste artigo, argumentamos que modelos lineares mistos (MLMs) são mais adequados que Análise de Variância (ANOVA) para lidar com dados de tempo de reação. Com a análise de um conjunto de dados simulados, mostramos que MLMs têm menor chance de incorrer em erros do Tipo I por permitir a inclusão de mais de um efeito aleatório (geralmente participantes e itens) em um único modelo. Também apresentamos uma introdução à implementação e análise de dados por meio de MLMs usando R e sugerimos materiais adicionais para os pesquisadores que desejarem fazer esse tipo de análise. Nosso principal objetivo é fomentar o uso de MLMs na comunidade psicolinguística brasileira.