1 Introduction

Iconicity is a perceived direct relationship between an aspect of meaning and its physical form (Emmorey 2014; Akita & Dingemanse 2019). In spoken language, a fundamental example of iconicity is ideophones, marked words depicting sensory imagery (Dingemanse 2012). The term ideophone subsumes onomatopoeia, as in the English woof woof for the sound of a dog bark, but also includes non-auditory meanings, e.g., kamúkamú (Pichi) ‘countermovement of buttocks while walking’ (Yakpo 2019), ŋẽʔŋẽʔ (Chaoyang) ‘manner of being baffled or dazed’ (Zhang 2016), or chun (Pastaza Quichua) ‘complete absence of sound’ (Nuckolls & Swanson 2019). Ideophones can thus span several semantic categories (Dingemanse 2012; Akita & Dingemanse 2019).

Ideophones are often cited as examples of sound symbolism which can be summed up to the relation of linguistic form to its meaning (Hinton et al. 1994). One implicit assumption underlying the term sound symbolism is that phonemes, or clusters of phonemes, map onto meaning below word or morpheme level thus acting as affordances which together allow the sound symbolic word to take on meaning. For example, the /ŋ/ in the English onomatopoeia /diŋ.dɔŋ/ seems to be characteristic of the reverberating echo of a bell tolling, while the alternating /i/ and /ɔ/ seems characteristic of movement or a fluctuation in pitch as the bell tolls. While various studies have worked to elicit submorphemic sound-to-meaning phoneme correspondences (McCune 1983; Maduka 1988; Oswalt 1994; Rhodes 1994; Hamano 1998; in press; Hutchins 1998; Blust 2003; Ofori 2009; Assaneo et al. 2011; Urban 2011; Akita et al. 2013; Ayalew 2013; Kwon & Round 2015; Blasi et al. 2016; Akita 2017; De Carolis et al. 2017; Strickland et al. 2017; Aryani 2018; Kawahara et al. 2018; Shih et al. 2018), the underlying mechanisms which allow for such correspondences in spoken language remain unclear (cf. Emmorey 2014 for signed language; cf. Sidhu & Pexman 2018 for overview). Specifically, it is unclear whether such correspondences are iconic (form miming meaning), and thus presumably universal, or simply systematic (form-meaning meappings).

Systematicity is defined as arbitrary and potentially language-specific patterns of sounds which exhibit a statistically consistent relationship to a group of words (Dingemanse et al. 2015: 604). The line between iconicity and systematicity may seem blurry since words embedded with iconic properties, like ideophones, sometimes exhibit systematic patterns. For example, nasal stops for many ideophones are interpreted as a systematic encoding of reverberation (Hinton et al. 1994; Hamano in press). Another example is Hamano’s (1998) full-scale analysis of Japanese ideophones, which is built on the idea that systematic sound-meaning mappings are rooted in iconic properties of phonemes. However, this does not mean that systematicity is iconicity. Technically speaking, morphemes are systematic form-meaning mappings, e.g., English prefix pre-. However, there are no claims that pre- is iconic because its systematic and Latinate origins are rather straightforward (OED 2018). Yet, this not the case for phonaesthemes. Phonaesthemes are clusters of phonemes which systematically pattern to meaning, e.g., gl- as in glisten, glimmer, and glint in English. Because of this and their diachronically obscure origins (see Table 1), phonaesthemes are misconstrued as examples of iconicity at work in spoken language (Hinton et al. 1994; Waugh 1994; Hutchins 1998; Bergen 2004; Smith 2014; Kwon & Round 2015). It is assumed that phonaesthemes are statistically consistent in their form-meaning mappings because they are inherently iconic one way or another. But if gl- is in fact iconic, then one might very well ask how gl- is imitative of glistening or any property of light for that matter. And one might also ask where that leaves cross-linguistically attested onomatopoeic /g/+/l/, as in glug, gloop, glom, and gulp (see Table 1). If we decide that systematicity is statistically robust because of iconicity, then we risk muddying the definition of iconicity. Iconicity is supposed to be rooted in universal, cognitive capabilities, not necessarily in statistical relationships. And if iconicity is not universal, then we must revise its quintessential potential for universality (Perniss et al. 2010).

To that end, as Dingemanse et al. (2015) propose, systematicity is often language-specific, not to mention arbitrary. Our study is motivated by the fact that there is no consensus for how to disentangle iconicity from systematicity. This paper offers a straightforward methodology for teasing apart systematicity and iconicity by using articulatory gestures to explain why some phonosemantic mappings are iconic and others not. Building a methodology to differentiate iconicity from systematicity is crucial in the research program of sound symbolism in order to make iconicity comparable across languages and identify which aspects are truly universal. We use ideophones from Chaoyang (Zhang 2016: 166–187)—a variety of Shantou (code: shan1244), a Southern Min (Sino-Tibetan) language spoken on the south eastern coast of Guangdong, P. R. China—to exemplify this methodology by identifying and explaining the perceptuo-motor analogies which underpin Chaoyang ideophone codas.¹ We focus on codas to illustrate our methodology because codas have been described as iconic of perceptual endings for ideophones across many unrelated languages (McCune 1983; Maduka 1988; Rhodes 1994; Oswalt 1994; Hamano 1998; in press; Hutchins 1998; Li 2007; Ofori 2009; Assaneo et al. 2011; Urban 2011; Ayalew 2013; Akita 2017; Strickland et al. 2017).²

In order to propose a new methodology that can tease apart iconicity from systematicity, we first overview how iconicity has been identified thus far in the literature. Some linguists argue that as long as native speakers consistently rate a word as “sounding like what it means” this judgement should be sufficient for knowing what is or is not iconic, and hence what the phonosemantics correspondences are in a given language. This notion has formed the basis of a few iconicity studies (Winter et al. 2017; Aryani 2018; Perlman et al. 2018; Sidhu & Pexman 2018). Other linguists argue that this judgment-based methodology is problematic because one is never entirely certain of what linguistic or cognitive intuitions speakers are ‘tapping into’ when making such a judgement (Akita & Dingemanse 2019). Instead, they argue that iconicity is in fact grounded in imitation or imitative properties, through either analogical or perceptuo-motor means (Nuckolls 2000; Dingemanse 2012; Dingemanse et al. 2015; Hatton 2016), much like the iconicity we see in hand gestures or sign languages (McNeill 2000; Kendon 2004; Emmorey 2014; Ortega et al. 2017; Ortega 2017). Phonosemantics is thus the phonological encoding of the imitation inherent to iconicity.

Following on from that, we take the position that phonosemantic mappings should be explainable in terms of imitation. When it comes to communication in the visual modality, this is highly intuitive and can be easily tested for universal tendencies by simply showing a sign or gesture to someone (Drijvers & Özyürek 2017; Ortega 2017; Ortega et al. 2017; Östling et al. 2018). But additional layers of language-specific complexity in spoken languages such as phonotactics, phonological inventories, or lexical association prevent the phonosemantics from jumping out at us like the imitation seen in the visual modality. For example, plosives in coda position are assumed to encode an ‘abrupt ending’ to a sound or event (Hinton et al. 1994). But then there is the problem of how languages which do not allow plosives in coda position, like Japanese or Mandarin, encode abruptness, if at all. It is perhaps for these language-specific and phonological reasons that so far no methodology has been introduced to identify phonosemantics (teasing them apart from aforementioned layers of complexity) and compare them across languages (to address the question of their universal or cross-linguistic bearing). Until such a methodology is established, it will be difficult to rectify the problem of judgement-based iconicity versus iconicity as imitation, since neither can be objectively tested for the spoken modality.

To begin rectifying the issue of what exactly makes a sound symbolic word iconic, and so the field of iconicity can move toward a unified understanding of what affordances in the spoken modality should be classified as iconic, this paper attempts to propose a new methodology for identifying how phonemes map to meaning through perceptuo-motor analogies. The proposed methodology relies on insights from gesture and sign language studies to create a multimodal explanation of how speech sounds are perceived as imitative.

First, §2 will provide a brief overview for the existing definitions of phonosemantics and propose a revised definition based upon that for the purposes of this study. Next, §3 will outline how iconicity is understood in gesture and sign language studies, as this provides an analogical basis for how the proposed methodology works for phonosemantics. Then, to illustrate the proposed methodological process step by step, we take ideophones (a.k.a. mimetics, expressives) in Chaoyang as our example dataset. Our reasoning for using ideophones to illustrate this methodology is because ideophones have been shown to be easily learnable by speakers from different language backgrounds, which speaks to the imitative nature of ideophones despite language-specific differences (Iwasaki et al. 2007a; b; Dingemanse et al. 2016; Lockwood et al. 2016). Thus, ideophones are an ideal testing ground due to their learnability based on phonological information coupled with semantic cues. §4 will show how phonosemantics can explain the imitative properties of relative and gestalt iconicity by eliminating phonotactically predictable segments and thereby extrapolating sound-meaning correspondences from imagic iconicity (i.e., onomatopoeia) based in articulatory features, e.g. [±tongue in resting position], [±closed lips], [±nasal airflow]. In this section, our methodology will be outlined in five steps. §5 will demonstrate the methodology by analysing the coda positions of Chaoyang ideophones. Finally, §6 will discuss the greater implications of this methodology in relation to learning and identifying universal properties of human perception expressed through linguistically imitative means.

2 Phonosemantics

Submorphemic sound-to-meaning mappings have been proposed for a number of languages (Maduka 1988; Rhodes 1994; Oswalt 1994; Waugh 1994; Hamano 1998; Blust 2003; Assaneo et al. 2011; Akita et al. 2013; Ayalew 2013; Kwon & Round 2015; Blasi et al. 2016). The general assumption behind these studies is loosely encapsulated by a hypothesis that “every phoneme is meaning-bearing”, and that this meaning “is rooted in its articulation” (Diffloth 1972; 1979; c.f. Dingemanse 2018 for review). This second tenet of phonosemantics has garnered support from recent studies which have found that articulation bears a relationship to imitative meaning (Oda 2000; Assaneo et al. 2011; Strickland et al. 2017; Taitz et al. 2018). However, this study does not assume that phonemes are always meaning-bearing in all phonological contexts. We follow Diffloth’s approach to phonosemantics (1972; 1979), whereby we assume that phonemes are meaning-bearing within the context of the expressive lexicon (hereon ideophone inventory) of a language. However, in light of recent research showing that ideophone inventories are subject to language-specific phonotactic constraints (Akita et al. 2013; Nasu 2015; Tsou 2017; Thompson 2018), we do not assume that all ideophone inventory phonemes in surface form are meaning-bearing. Some phonemes are realized for purely phonological reasons, e.g., to satisfy constraints with regard to syllable structure. Therefore, our methodology requires that phonotactically motivated phonemes be removed before proposing phonosemantic mappings. From here on “phonosemantic” will refer to sound-meaning mappings embedded with imitative properties, like those of ideophones, while “form-meaning” will refer to sound-meaning mappings derived through systematicity, like those of phonaesthemes.

For the purposes of introducing the methodology of this paper, we will look at words belonging to the ideophone inventory of Chaoyang. As stated above, we take the position that all ideophones should be semantically explainable through some of their articulatory properties and the perceptuo-motor analogies they afford, while prosaic (i.e., non-imitative, arbitrary) words should not (Dingemanse et al. 2015). Most prosaic words should beget their form-meaning mappings through historical roots or other lexical or systematic phonological associations.³ This is illustrated in Table 1 below, where row 1 is purely a phonological pattern, as opposed to a meaning-bearing pattern, row 2 is a form-meaning pattern derived through historical (as opposed to imitative) processes, and row 3 is a phonosemantic pattern with articulatory grounding and attested across multiple unrelated languages (Thompson 2017).

Contrary to our theoretical position outlined above, Kwon & Round (2015) would propose that Type 2 Phonological + Meaning in Table 1 be considered iconic. According to this line of thinking, iconic sound-meaning mappings can be language -specific and are not necessarily universal. This divide in how iconicity should be identified, and its implications on the universal nature of iconicity, is our point of departure: If iconicity in the spoken modality is not always adherent to universal tendencies across unrelated languages, but is instead expressible via more language-specific means, then language-specific iconicity should still be rooted in some universal tendencies about how imitation is perceived. And, if the perception of words as imitative is derived from perceptuo-motor analogies, i.e., analogies which form meaningful links between motor skills and sound (Dingemanse 2012; Dingemanse et al. 2015), then imitative meaning should be encoded via phonosemantic mappings, since their phoneme meaning is rooted in their articulation, and articulation of sound is a type of motor skill. Following on from this, the present methodology seeks to identify and explain iconicity using the perceptuo-motor analogies created from articulatory gesture and movement. We take the position that these perceptuo-motor analogies are encoded phonemically and therefore create phonosemantic mappings. Ultimately, if the form-meaning mapping of a word cannot be grounded in the articulatory gesture, then said word should not be considered iconic, because its meaning is not explainable via perceptuo-motor analogy.

Given that the current proposal relies on the analogy of imitation through gesture, it is important to understand how iconicity is expressed through physical means in the visual modality. The visual modality is full of iconicity (McNeill 2000; Brentari 2010; Channon & van der Hulst 2011; Östling et al. 2018). Our reason for drawing on the visual modality to inform this methodology is because sign language and gesture researchers have clear ideas about what is iconic and what is systematic (Bellugi & Klima 1976; McNeill 2000; Kendon 2004; Emmorey 2014; Ortega 2017; Östling et al. 2018). Research in this vein of the visual modality is based on gesture (handshape, hand movement), something which is analogically relatable via oral articulatory gesture to the spoken modality. This line of reasoning seems appropriate since ideophone researchers have proposed ideophones to be oral extensions of physical or bodily gestures (Nuckolls 2000; Mihas 2013; Hatton 2016). By drawing more detailed parallels with the spoken modality in Table 1, the next section outlines how the visual modality can be understood as both systematic, systematic and meaningful, and systematic and imitative. These parallels in turn form the basis of our current methodology.

3 Identifying iconicity in the visual modality

For communication in the visual modality, iconicity is predominantly understood as imitation: handshape or hand movement is perceived to share some property of its referent (McNeill 2000; Kendon 2004; Brentari 2010; Emmorey 2014), such as a flat open hand as depictive of level or even surfaces due to shared properties of the handshape and its referent. These shared properties form what Emmorey (2014) calls structure mappings in iconicity. The concept of flatness or a flat surface is structurally mapped with a flat handshape. Shared properties between a sign and its referent are fundamental when it comes to determining whether or not a linguistic unit is imitative or structure-mapping.

Examples in Table 2 are from Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) (illustrated with handshape font created by the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong). As in row 3 of Table 2 below, for signs like PAPER, FOLD, HIGHWAY, and BOOK, the active articulator (hand) assumes a flat and open shape. This articulation is common across signs depicting similar semantic domains across unrelated sign languages (cf. Asia Signbank, SignTyp, and KISR’s Kuwaiti Sign Dictionary). What causes these signs to share properties (look similar) even though these sign languages might have had little contact? The answer is imitation or, again, what Emmorey (2014) calls structure mapping.⁴ Signs involving iconic properties, like those in row 3 of Table 2, have also been shown to be easier for naïve signers to learn (Ortega 2017), as opposed to the prosaic signs in rows 1 and 2. When it comes to iconic signs, this ease of learnability speaks to their imitative nature which is accessible even to those with little or no sign language background.

Table 2

Prosaic, systematic, and iconic handshapes in sign languages.

	Type	Handshape	Status	Explanation
1.	Phonological (Non-structure mapping)	[fist clenched, index finger bent] NINE, REMEMBER, TO HAVE, BRITISH, LANGUAGE, PLASTIC	Prosaic, Language specific	no semantic domain
				physically possible > phonotactically legal > exploitable handshape in HKSL
2.	Phonological + Meaning (Non-structure mapping)	[fist clenched, pinkie up] NO GOOD, CANNOT, WRONG, FEMALE, SEX	Prosaic, Language- specific	= negativity, taboo, femininity
				Related meanings attested across related languages: Japanese Sign Language (JSL), Taiwan Sign Language (TSL), Korean Sign Language (KSL)
				> historical relatedness > cognates
3.	Phonological + Meaning (Structure-mapping)	[flat open hand] FLAT, PAPER, BOOK, NOTEBOOK, NEWSPAPER, TO FOLD, HIGHWAY	Imitative, Universal tendencies	= flatness, broad surface
				Related meanings attested across unrelated languages: American Sign Language (ASL), French Sign Language (LSF), British Sign Language (BSL), Finnish Sign Language, Kuwaiti Sign Language, Kenyan Sign Language, Jakarta Sign Language, Ho Chi Minh City Sign Language, Sri Lanka Sign Language etc.
				Perception of the world > imitation > systematic use of articulatory gestures encoded through similar phonological means

With this idea of shared properties creating structure mappings between handshape and meaning, some additional parallels between Table 1 above and Table 2 below can be drawn. Like the segments in the third column of Table 1, all the handshapes of Table 2 can act as submorphemic units. Row 1 of Tables 1 and 2 show submorphemic units which (1) do not relate back to a common semantic domain (e.g., flat, sat, pat, hat, cat = ? shared meaning; NINE, REMEMBER, BRITISH, PLASTIC = ? shared meaning), and (2) thus have no potential for being classified as iconic in this case. Therefore, rows 1 of Tables 1 and 2 are purely units of phonological patterning. There is no structure mapping in these handshapes. However, if a submorphemic unit is indicative of a common semantic domain, then this could be an indication of iconicity at work. But, as seen in rows 2 of Tables 1 and 2, this is not always the case. Common semantic domains can also be expressed through systematicity, i.e., specific patterns which are associated to a meaning arbitrarily. After a little observation, it becomes quite self-evident that there is in fact no shared property between the sign and its meaning for rows 2 in Tables 1 and 2. The association between submorphemic units and meaning is purely systematic and must be learnt rote.

The above discussion about iconicity in the visual modality is based on examples of primary or direct iconicity. In row 3 of Table 2 we have handshape matching shape meaning. What we have left out of Table 2 is when handshape maps to a meaning indirectly depicted by its shape, e.g., a flat open hand to depict begging. A mapping of this type naturally requires an additional analogical step, e.g., receiving an offering in the hands > asking for an offering > begging, which is later discussed with respect to COGNITIVE ideophones in §5.2. Note that the purpose of this section is to show that shared properties between a linguistic unit (no matter the modality) and its meaning are the key to determining whether or not phonosemantic mappings are rooted in iconicity. If a linguistic unit cannot be explained in terms of shared properties, ideally supported by cross-linguistic evidence, the outlook for iconicity should be very weak. Based on the assumptions in this chapter, we propose a methodology for identifying iconic phonosemantic mappings by applying the general form-meaning principles exemplified in Tables 1 and 2 to a phonological analysis of ideophones from Chaoyang.

6 Implications

By proposing physiologically accessible articulatory movements as features, e.g. [±oral contact], [±tongue resting], [±airflow], [±nasal], it is possible to make concise comparisons of ideophone phonosemantic structure across languages and methodologies. We can see (1) whether ideophones in other languages also make use of these features in the same imitative ways as Chaoyang, and (2) whether participants rely on these perceptuo-motor features when creating novel iconic forms during psycholinguistic experiments (Imai et al. 2008; Assaneo et al. 2011; Perlman & Lupyan 2018; Taitz et al. 2018). In addition, we can now formulate a tentative, yet clear, and testable hypothesis for why ideophones are easier to learn despite a speaker’s language background.

Phonosemantic mappings make up the structure of ideophones. Phonosemantic mappings derive their meaning through perceptuo-motor affordances. Perceptuo-motor affordances are not phonology- or language-specific, but are accessible to all speakers because they are derived from bundles of physiologically accessible articulatory properties (e.g., tongue in resting position, oral contact, airflow through the nose, glottal closure etc.), albeit arranged according to a language-specific syllable structure. These bundles provide perceptual or sensory information which are in turn seen as analogous to their referent. And, in turn, making these sensory-referent connections is possible because creating analogical relations is an inherent cognitive ability not exclusive to language.

For example, even though Dutch and Japanese sound systems and phonological inventories differ considerably, Dutch speakers were able to learn Japanese ideophones better when presented with their congruent Dutch meaning than their incongruent Dutch meaning (Lockwood et al. 2016), e.g., Japanese kibi-kibi was better learnt as its true meaning of ‘energetic’ than the opposite meaning of ‘lifeless’. According to our hypothesis, this is because Dutch speakers were able to first sidestep phonological differences between Japanese and Dutch, and then access and relate the fundamental articulatory properties of the Japanese ideophone to aspects of its congruent meaning. That is to say, the perceptual information provided by the articulatory properties of Japanese ideophones was not sufficient for making analogical connections to the incongruent Dutch meanings. Lastly, it is important to note that Japanese ideophones used in Lockwood et al.’s (2016) experimental paradigm spanned across a range of semantic categories.

The findings of Lockwood et al. (2016) seem to go against the observations made by Güldemann (2008)¹⁶ whereby “the larger the class of ideophonic items in a language, the lower the possibility of iconicity.” Our methodology offers a way to mitigate these opposing views because we assume that phonosemantic mappings from one semantic category interact with and inform other semantic categories. We rephrase Güldemann’s (2008) statement with special attention to “the lower the possibility of iconicity” below.

The larger the class of ideophonic items in a language, the higher the likelihood that this class of ideophonic items spans more than just two or three semantic categories from the Dingemanse (2012) hierarchy. According to our methodology, this would mean that, the more semantic categories of ideophones in a given language, the more layers of analogical extrapolation of a form-meaning mapping from one semantic category to another. This would not result in a “lower possibility of iconicity” as Güldemann (2008) states, but, instead, a higher amount of obscured or indirect iconicity—what Sonesson (1997: 2) terms “secondary iconicity”. That is to say, more semantic categories in the ideophone inventory of X-language results in multiple layers of (inter-related) secondary iconicity which is not entirely obvious to those who do not speak X-language. Non-speakers of X-language are thus denied access to the means with which to extrapolate X-language phonosemantic mappings from one (more fundamental) semantic category of ideophones (i.e., SOUND) to the next. However, Lockwood et al. (2016) demonstrated that non-speakers can access these phonosemantic mappings at an above chance level under the right semantic context afforded by experimental conditions, i.e., a forced-choice task.

Testing the implications of our methodology as well as our revision of Güldemann’s (2008) claim requires further experimental work, like that of Lockwood et al. (2016), across speakers of various language backgrounds as well as ideophones from different languages. Additional in-depth analysis on the inventories of ideophones from other languages, using the methodology proposed here, is important for understanding structural differences in terms of how articulatory properties are bundled together to form a perceptuo-motor affordance behind a phonosemantic mapping. For example, we would expect ideophones from languages with restricted syllable structure (e.g., CV-only languages) or with limited sound inventories to differ in phonological structure from ideophones of languages without such restrictions. The question is, are the same articulatory properties accessible despite such typological differences? And does semantic category (ideophones other than onomatopoeia, e.g., MOTION, SENSORY, COGNITIVE) affect how perceptuo-motor affordances form phonosemantic mappings? That is to say, if /k/ in coda position denotes “sharp” and “punctual” endpoints, does it also share perceptuo-motor affordances with non-auditory ideophones like those which depict the sharp and punctual pain of a pinprick? With respect to answering such a question, we have stipulated an order to follow based on Dingemanse’s (2012) semantic hierarchy. At the end of §5.2 we showed how it is necessary to first analyse the most fundamental (unimodal) semantic categories of iconicity (SOUND) before moving on to multimodal categories (MOTION, SENSORY, COGNITIVE).

Though not overtly mentioned in this paper, we do not exclude additional structural (i.e., syntactic) or extra-linguistic (i.e., cultural) factors. We also do not consider how acoustic factors might contribute to the formation of perceptuo-motor analogies underpinning iconic sound-to-meaning (phonosemantic) mappings. We left out acoustic factors mainly for concerns of space and also because we exemplified our methodology using consonants which lend themselves better to articulation as opposed to acoustics. However acoustic and other factors should be considered for future comparisons of ideophone structure with aims of identifying universal properties of human perception expressed through linguistically imitative means (cf. Perlman & Lupyan 2018). Finally, in our mappings there were no exceptions, and this is perhaps because we were able to succinctly group our ideophones into semantic categories and make phonotactic relations relevant to these groups. How much freedom can be allowed for other languages (and other syllable positions) requires further investigation from other languages. While it may not always be the case that, once phonologically-predictable and phonotactic elements have been dealt with, what segmentally remains can be explained through iconic or imitative means, our methodology should aim for maximal coverage of the remaining segments.

Using this methodology, we can now provide a gestural explanation for why onomatopoeia and ideophones are iconic. We now have grounds to explanation why systematic patterns like those attested in some phonaesthemes (e.g., gl- in glitter, glisten, glimmer) are not iconic. At the start of this paper we cited the gl- phonaesthemes as an example of systematicity often misconstrued as iconicity. With our methodology in place, we are now better equipped to argue for or against the presence of iconic affordances in phonaesthemes and other prosaic words. For example, the tenets of our methodology seem to support Blust’s (2003) imitative explanation for the occurrence of /ŋ/ in nose-related prosaic words throughout Austronesian languages.

Figure 4 below illustrates how articulatory features of our methodology can subsume language-specific phonemes and thus reveal similarities in the structure-mappings of cross-linguistic ideophones. In this case, we use the ideophones ‘sound of a doorbell’ from Chaoyang, English, and Japanese to illustrate our point. The dashed lines show the articulatory features in common for onset and coda position respectively. First, we can account for the segmental differences between Chaoyang, English, and Japanese ideophones using phonotactics. For the codas, /ŋ/ and /n/ are the only permissible nasal codas in Chaoyang and Japanese respectively. The English use of /ŋ/ is perhaps homophony avoidance with dean and dawn. However, the fact that [+tongue root] is used in both Chaoyang and English /ŋ/ might speak to a [+nasal airflow] [+tongue root] perceptuo-motor affordance which is otherwise not phonotactically permissible in the coda position of Japanese. With regards to onsets, in Japanese, coronals /d/ or /t/ are not permissible because they must be realized as affricates before /i/ (Labrune 2012). Seeing as voicing systematically depicts intensity in Japanese ideophones (Kakehi et al. 1996), e.g., korokoro ‘rolling’ > gorogoro ‘heavy rolling,’ /b/ is arguably inapplicable here. Comparing the Japanese example to the Chaoyang and English, suggests that coronal stops, rather than labial stops, are preferred when depicting the onset of a bell chime. The choice of coronal stop can be articulatory explained as a tapping contact against a passive surface–analogical to the contact required of a chime. In Chaoyang and English, coronal stops are permitted before /i/ and so they are able to make form-meaning mappings in this way. Japanese, on the other hand, must make do with what articulatory contact is phonotactically permissible before /i/. With this observation in mind, we can explain the onsets for English and Chaoyang. In English, the only stops which can occur in onset position without aspiration are /d/ and /g/. Thus, /p/ is not possible for English because it must be realized as [p^h] in onsets. The [+voice] nature of /d/ seems to be a phonological compromise in order to avoid the obligatory aspiration of [t^h] whilst maintaining [–tongue root] by avoiding /g/. In Chaoyang, /p t k/ are all permissible in onset position of ideophones. The use of /t/ here is faithful to our explanation that an active articulator making contact with a passive articulator is analogically related to the physical contact involved in ringing a chime. Note that /d/ is not a phoneme in Chaoyang. The avoidance of [+aspiration] and [+tongue root] for all onsets in Figure 4 is beyond the scope of this illustrative example. What our methodology allows us to hypothesize from this example is that these articulatory gestures (or a combination thereof) should be attested in semantically similar ideophones across languages. Moreover, we can hypothesize that Chaoyang speakers might rely on the articulatory cues shown in Figure 4 to map, learn, or guess these Japanese and English meanings.

Figure 4

Shared articulatory features in onset and coda positon for one SOUND ideophone across three unrelated languages.

Essentially, we now have a means to argue for whether prosaic words or phonaesthemes contain articulatory features which allow speakers to make perceptuo-motor analogies connected with their meanings. For example, if speakers rate the prosaic word balloon as highly iconic, our methodology allows for comparison between the articulatory features of balloon and the articulatory features of ideophones to see if there is any crossover which could result in prosaic balloon being perceived by native speakers as highly iconic. Following on from this, take the phonaestheme –ump (i.e., clump, hump, bump, lump, slump, stump, mumps, plump), there is an etymological explanation for the appearance of this phonaestheme in certain words.¹⁷ But future studies can now use our methodology to see whether the bundle of articulatory features embodied by said phonaestheme, [+closed lips] [+resting] [+nasal air flow], is found in similar semantic realms intra-linguistically (e.g., How do English onomatopoeia make use of these features? How many semantically unrelated prosasic words exist with the same –ump sequence?) and cross-linguistically in either prosaic words (e.g., hump, bump, slump in Malay, Estonian, Cantonese, Zulu, Quechua etc.) or ideophones. One might argue that the articulatory choreography required by the features of –ump [+closed lips] [+resting] [+nasal air flow] allows for perceptuo-motor analogy of ‘roundness’ simulated by closing the lips + tongue in a neutral position + bilabial stop creating pressure in front of the oral cavity behind the lips from unreleased air. More data and detailed phonotactic analysis, as required by our methodology, is of course needed to support such a wishful explanation for the supposedly perceptuo-motor analogies underpinning the structure of these phonaesthemes.

Finally, in a similar vein to phonaesthemes, sound-to-meaning correspondences have been noted across many languages for prosaic words which are not intuitively imitative in nature (i.e., not ideophones), e.g., ash, bite, bone, breasts, knee, leaf (Blasi et al. 2016; cf. Aryani 2018 for German affective words). Though a concrete explanation for such findings remains to be seen, the methodology proposed here has great potential to determine how iconically grounded these robust cross-linguistic mappings actually are.

7 Conclusion

Prior to the methodology laid out in this paper, there has been no clear way to differentiate and qualify forms of iconicity versus forms of systematicity in spoken language. Because of this, systematicity in language has sometimes been misappropriated as a form of iconicity. Regular systematic patterns, such as phonaesthemes in English, have been explained as systematically occurring in language because of iconic underpinnings. But if systematic patterns are only found in related languages, what does this mean for the universal nature supposedly inherent to iconicity? Despite the fact that systematicity has been defined as usually arbitrary and rooted in statistical relationships (Dingemanse et al. 2015), those who still claim that instances of systematicity are in fact underlyingly iconic are yet somehow unable to explain what makes these supposedly iconic underpinnings different from or similar to those attested in iconic forms like onomatopoeia. Our methodology answers this question by showing how articulatory gestures (lip movement, tongue movement, air flow etc.) can be used to identify the iconic underpinnings for imitative words and explain them using perceptuo-motor analogy. Conversely, our methodology asserts that if a linguistic form cannot be explained through articulatory gesture, and thus a perceptuo-motor analogy, it cannot or should not be considered iconic. Following on from this, our methodology also holds that the universally accessible nature of articulatory gestures and their sensory properties coupled with speakers’ universal ability to create analogy to scaffold meaning are what allows for words like ideophones to be perceived as iconic and therefore imitative. This would mean that purely systematic forms, as seen in some phonaesthemes, should not be explainable through articulatory gesture and as a result should be semantically opaque or difficult to learn for non-native speakers who have zero exposure to their systematic relationship in English or another related language. Such a claim about non-iconic words is in line with current ideophone research which has shown that Dutch speakers have an easier time learning iconic words from Japanese so long as the meanings of the Japanese words are their true meaning and not an incongruent foil (Lockwood et al. 2016).

In terms of explaining away the structure of imitative words like ideophones, our methodology shifts the focus of ideophone structure (and its relationship with sound-to-meaning mappings) away from language-specific features (i.e., phonemes or even phonological features) and towards broader and more articulation-based categories with greater potential for linguistic universality, such as tongue position, tongue movement, airflow, nasality, open/closed lips. Given their anatomical qualities, these broader and more articulation-based categories should be accessible to all speakers regardless of phonological and phonotactic differences attested cross-linguistically. This is our attempt to solve the problem of iconicity being apparently universal without actually appearing so at the segment-level. In other words, our methodology uses broad categories of articulatory gesture to answer the question of “Why does Language A use sound X to imitate referent Y while Language B uses sound Z?” Another way of putting it, our methodology uses articulatory gestures to answer why dogs bark differently in different languages. With this articulation-based methodology, we can now differentiate universal properties of iconicity versus language-specific properties of systematicity.

Overall, our methodology unifies the visual and spoken modalities by adapting iconicity of the visual modality to the spoken modality using articulatory gestures. Gaps in how to identify and explain iconicity in the spoken modality have been filled here through cross-pollination of knowledge from the culmination of research in the visual modality. This application across modalities speaks to the universal nature of iconicity yet again.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.