zompist bboard

1c, 2a, 3c, 4b

1b, 2a, 3c, 4c

1c, 2a, 3c, 4c

1c 2a 3a 4a

1b 2a 3c 4b

1c, 2a, 3c, 4b.

Observer wrote:The Bouba/Kiki effect fascinates me. I'm going to post several made-up words with three possible definitions each. I'd appreciate it if you'd post what you think the definition of each word should be, based solely on its sound. If you look at other peoples posts before you post, you may influence your decisions.

1. sverous [sv'ɛərɪs]
a. amicable
b. indifferent
c. rude

2. mara ['mɑɾɑ]
a. wood
b. metal
c. plastic

3. ghult ['gʌlt]
a. freed
b. guarded
c. captured

4. nur ['njuɾ]
a. sun
b. moon
c. star

finlay wrote:if you want to do an experiment like this, you need to check what the subject's native language is, otherwise your results will be negated because you can say "well it actually might be because of differing languages". to do this kind of test ideally you want native monolingual speakers of two particular languages so that you can compare and see if it's crosslinguistic. furthermore, if one group consistently comes up with an answer that another group doesn't, it's probably some other influence (for instance, clawgrip and myself both picked c for 1 because it sounds like another English word, although I thought it sounded like swear).

Naeboşkoventi wrote:

finlay wrote:if you want to do an experiment like this, you need to check what the subject's native language is, otherwise your results will be negated because you can say "well it actually might be because of differing languages". to do this kind of test ideally you want native monolingual speakers of two particular languages so that you can compare and see if it's crosslinguistic. furthermore, if one group consistently comes up with an answer that another group doesn't, it's probably some other influence (for instance, clawgrip and myself both picked c for 1 because it sounds like another English word, although I thought it sounded like swear).

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that 1) sounds like "severe", and ghult reminds me of "caught" / "captured". But I suspect this is a big part of sound symbolism anyway (i.e. association with related words).

1b, 2a, 3c, 4b
2 is not plastic because it looks like a more basic word.
4 as moon might be influenced by English and Chinese.

finlay wrote:if you want to do an experiment like this, you need to check what the subject's native language is, otherwise your results will be negated because you can say "well it actually might be because of differing languages". to do this kind of test ideally you want native monolingual speakers of two particular languages so that you can compare and see if it's crosslinguistic. furthermore, if one group consistently comes up with an answer that another group doesn't, it's probably some other influence (for instance, clawgrip and myself both picked c for 1 because it sounds like another English word, although I thought it sounded like swear).

finlay wrote:

Naeboşkoventi wrote:

finlay wrote:if you want to do an experiment like this, you need to check what the subject's native language is, otherwise your results will be negated because you can say "well it actually might be because of differing languages". to do this kind of test ideally you want native monolingual speakers of two particular languages so that you can compare and see if it's crosslinguistic. furthermore, if one group consistently comes up with an answer that another group doesn't, it's probably some other influence (for instance, clawgrip and myself both picked c for 1 because it sounds like another English word, although I thought it sounded like swear).

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that 1) sounds like "severe", and ghult reminds me of "caught" / "captured". But I suspect this is a big part of sound symbolism anyway (i.e. association with related words).

No, the most surprising thing about bouba/kiki was that it holds across language boundaries extraordinarily consistently.

1a 2b 3b 4b

Answers wrote:1b 2a 3b 4b

1b 2a 3a 4b