{"pk":21473,"title":"Exploring the evolutionary dynamics of sound symbolism","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This paper uses phylogenetic modeling to investigate the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of sound symbolism in the world's languages. \nApplying our model to sound-meaning correspondences reported in the literature, we find that many previously established associations are weaker than expected when analyzed using our framework. This is possibly because certain sound-meaning associations are artifacts of slow-changing vocabulary items rather than specific preferences for certain sounds in words with certain meanings. For sound-meaning associations for which we find evidence, the maintenance of sound symbolism appears to be due to a tendency to preserve words in certain meanings if certain sounds are present.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Evolution; Language development; Phonology; Computational Modeling; Phylogenetic Reconstruction"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3tc941m4","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Chundra","middle_name":"","last_name":"Cathcart","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Zurich","department":""},{"first_name":"Gerhard","middle_name":"","last_name":"Jäger","name_suffix":"","institution":"Tübingen University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21473/galley/11072/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21473/galley/21918/download/"}]}