Talk by Aleksandra Ćwiek (ZAS Berlin)

by Anna Pressler Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Aleksandra Ćwiek in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: Wednesday May 21st 2025 Time: 16-18 ct Title: Vocal iconicity and... what beats the bouba-kiki effect? Abstract:  Iconicity is a fundamental phenomenon where a form resembles its meaning, bridging perception and communication across modalities. While iconicity has been widely accepted in gesture and sign language research, the iconic potential of vocal communication has often been questioned. This talk delves into vocal iconicity, showcasing that sounds can convey meaning far beyond traditional language boundaries. Drawing on cross-linguistic research on novel vocalizations, I demonstrate the expressive power of vocal iconicity. The second part of the talk explores cross-modal correspondences, where sensory modalities interact to form iconic mappings, such as associating shapes with sounds. I begin by presenting the classic bouba-kiki paradigm, which demonstrates a cross-modal correspondence between vision and sound bridged across cultures by iconicity. I then move on to a recent study revealing that trilled [r] is associated...
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Talk by Brechtje Post (Cambridge University)

by Anna Pressler Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Brechtje Post in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: May 14th 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Linguistic phonetic biases in first and second language acquisition Abstract:  In acquiring ambient language, infants have to learn: - phonetic skills (negotiate universal phonetic constraints in flux) - language-specific phonological structure - language-specific linguistic-phonetic ‘devices’ to signal this structure - the complex mappings between structure and these ‘devices’ - ‘linguistic-phonetic biases’ which specify the mapping between abstract structures and the phonetic forms, or devices, used to implement them These all shape acquisition pathway individually and cross-linguistically for children and adult learners. However, these ‘devices’ may be used as a multiple signifier in a particular language, e.g. the role of duration in English where it cues e.g. voice (‘pre-fortis clipping’) as well as vowel quality, but also the marking of prosodic heads and edges. How do infants and other language learners juggle these when their languages place competing demands on these ‘devices’? And more broadly,...
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