Do Sibilants Fly? Evidence from a Sound Symbolic Pattern in Pokémon Names

Abstract

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.

A wug-shaped curve in sound symbolism: the case of Japanese Pokémon names

“…Some previous Pokémonastics experiments had been advertised on the same website (e.g. Kawahara, Godoy & Kumagai 2020), and 124 participants reported that they had either taken part in another Pokémonastics experiment or had studied sound symbolism before. Three participants were non-native speakers of Japanese.…”

Sound symbolism in Brazilian Portuguese Pokémon names: Evidence for cross-linguistic similarities and differences

“…Previous studies have shown that increasing the number of choices to four in forced-choice tasks may decrease the chance of participants answering accordingly to the expected response (Aveyard 2012). Finally, in all the experiments reported by Kawahara et al (2020) and Kawahara et al (submitted), the flying aspect of the characters was highlighted by the fact that they were always presented in contrast with non-flying Pokémon. In the instructions, participants were told to pay attention to the fact that there were different types of Pokémon, and during the experimental trials, Pokémon were explicitly labelled as "normal Pokémon" and "flying Pokémon" (see an approximation of this experimental setting in Figure 3).…”

“…The findings by Kawahara & Kumagai (2019b) and Kawahara et al (2020) were later replicated with English speakers (Kawahara et al submitted). These studies open up a new opportunity to address which sound symbolic patterns are universal and which are language-specific (see above, as well as Iwasaki et al 2007 andSaji et al 2013 for language-specific symbolic associations), a topic of study that, as reviewed above, may shed light on how sound symbolism develops during language acquisition (Imai & Kita, 2014;Kantartzis 2011), what role it might have played in language evolution and communication (Perlman & Lupyan, 2018) and what the physiological and physical roots of these associations are (Morton 1994;Ohala 1994).…”

“…), and the initial analyses (Hosokawa et al 2018) found that the evil and the fairy type characters in Japanese were named in the original franchise with names that contained, more voiced obstruents and more labial consonants, respectively. Kawahara & Kumagai (2019b) and Kawahara et al (2020) followed up on these initial studies with a series of experiments that suggest that Japanese speakers use sound symbolism to signal several Pokémon types.…”

“…The association between the act of flying and sibilants (e.g., /s, ∫, z/) has not been extensively investigated by studies on sound symbolism, but this connection was implied in some ancient texts (Kawahara et al 2020). The Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit texts, state that sibilants represent the sky and the wind (in opposition to the fire or the earth, for example).…”