Round and sharp words in the brain: exploring the neural signatures of sound-symbolic iconicity in language production par Giulio Massari

Linguistic forms can raise intuitive, likely unlearned associations with meaning. Iconic mappings, i.e. non-arbitrary correspondences between word meanings and forms, permeate the lexicon of both signed and spoken languages. While in sign language, these correspondences can rely exclusively on the visual modality – e.g. the sign for chat in French Sign Language mimics the cat’s whiskers via the signer’s fingers – spoken languages are forced to work through cross-modal links among senses: a mechanism known as sound symbolism. Therefore, a word like ballon ‘sounds’ round in virtue of the linguistic units (phonemes) composing it, which raise a symbolic association with the shape of its referring object. Psycholinguistic studies show that, at the behavioral level, iconic words and signs are processed differently than arbitrary ones in both production and comprehension tasks. Moreover, neurolinguistic studies show that in sign language, iconic signs are processed in a partially different manner at the neural level, and that in spoken language, the brain is sensitive to the match between a word’s sound symbolic potential and the presentation of a simultaneous (round or sharp) visual stimulus. However, it is yet unknown whether, in the spoken modality as well, iconic and arbitrary words differ in terms of neural signatures upon their processing. In this talk, I will present the results of a novel EEG study which tackles this question by testing for differences in the evoked-related potentials (ERPs) associated to the retrieval of iconic vs. arbitrary words, as prompted by a picture naming task. I will describe the results obtained on the task and discuss their potential implications for the understanding of the neural encoding of sound-symbolic iconicity in the lexicon. I will also discuss the limitations inherent to the chosen paradigm and the current state of analysis, as well as some possible ways out envisioned for them.

Résumé en français

Giulio Massari is affiliated with the Université Côte d’Azur (Laboratoire Bases, Corpus, Langage, MSHS-SE) as a PhD student in Sciences du Langage, under the supervision of Raphaël Fargier and Fanny Meunier. With a background in linguistics and cognitive science, gained between Italy (Università di Siena) and France (École Normale Supérieure-PSL, Université Paris Cité), he currently explores the cognitive and neural correlates of lexical representations and their access mechanisms in language production. More specifically, he focuses on how different degrees of entanglement between word’s phonological and semantic properties shape the cognitive processes allowing for the retrieval of words for speech.