The Whale and the Microorganism: A Tale of a Classic Example and Linguistic Intuitions

Author:

Lev‐Ari Shiri1

Affiliation:

1. Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London

Abstract

AbstractA classic example of the arbitrary relation between the way a word sounds and its meaning is thatmicroorganismis a very long word that refers to a very small entity, whereaswhaleis a very short word that refers to something very big. This example, originally presented in Hockett's list of language's design features, has been often cited over the years, not only by those discussing the arbitrary nature of language, but also by researchers of sound symbolism. While the two groups disagreed regarding the role of arbitrariness and sound symbolism in language, they both agreed there is a nonsound symbolic relation between word length and entity size in this case. This paper shows that the length of the wordswhaleandmicroorganismin fact reflects a sound symbolic pattern. An analysis of >600 languages from >100 language families shows that languages use longer words to denote the conceptsmallthan they do to denote the conceptbig. The paper thus shows how explicit judgments might differ from implicit cognitive association and the problem of relying on these in sound symbolism research.

Publisher

Wiley

Subject

Artificial Intelligence,Cognitive Neuroscience,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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