[Lingtyp] a sound symbolism/iconicity workshop at SLE 2027

[Dahlgren, Sonja A K]

Dear all,

This could be of interest to some of you: we have submitted a workshop proposal on sound symbolism/iconicity for SLE 2027, emphasising typological research. Have a look at the cfp below - if you're interested, the first stage abstract requires minimal effort as it's only max. 100 words, by Nov 10th, directly to us.

Best wishes
Sonja (also for Gerd and Axel).

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Shaping iconicity: Are language-specific sound symbolic vocalizations examples of universal tendencies?
Convenors:
Sonja Dahlgren (University of Helsinki)
Gerd Carling (Goethe University)
Axel Ekström (Umeå University)
Keywords: iconicity, language-specificity, sound symbolism, arbitrariness, linguistic universality
Abstracts: Please send provisional abstracts of max. 100 words (excluding references) in PDF format by November 10th 2026 to: sonja.dahlgren at helsinki.fi<mailto:sonja.dahlgren at helsinki.fi>, carling at em.uni-frankfurt.de<mailto:carling at em.uni-frankfurt.de>, or axel.ekstrom at umu.se. On approval of the workshop, authors are asked to submit an abstract of 500 words according to the SLE guidelines.
Workshop description
In the realm of phonological representation, are there biases skewing speakers toward imitating sounds similarly, regardless of the native language? Theoretically this should be possible, as humans have similar (if not the same; see Blasi et al. 2019) anatomical capacity to produce sounds regardless of their native language, and there are many cases where sound symbolism violates L1 phonotactics (Körtvélyessy 2025: 87-115). Alternatively, are sound symbolic relationships shaped differently by environmental factors: the presence of certain animal species, climate conditions (e.g., Everett 2017), or other cultural factors?
Questions concerning cross-linguistic regularities have been central to the study of sound symbolism and iconicity from the early stages of the field. This has been reflected in many fundamental studies: for example, iconicity in demonstrative pronouns has been studied extensively with slightly varying results, but mostly connectable to Ohala’s (1994) frequency code theory on size sound-symbolism (Ultan 1978; Ohala 1984; Woodworth 1991; Traunmüller 1994; Johansson & Zlatev 2013). In recent decades, there has been a surge in research on language-specific coding of iconicity. Imai and Kita (2014) showed that Japanese and English comparisons differ according to the nature of their sound symbolism; Dahlgren & Kittilä (2026) found that language-specific patterns contribute to the sound symbolic coding of the distance distinction in demonstratives; Flaksman & Kilpatrick (2025) have shown that language-specificity in imitative words can increase over time as iconicity decreases.
The level of cultural adaptation of iconicity is difficult to determine based on data from individual languages. A cross-linguistic study of 215 Italian and Polish participants listening to words of four unknown languages (Finnish, Japanese, Swahili, Tamil) gave uncertain results regarding how identifiable foreign sound symbolic words are. Interestingly, Finnish and Japanese gave significant results while Swahili and Tamil were barely above chance level (D’Anselmo et al. 2019). A prior study by Dingemanse et al. (2016) also showed that people with no knowledge of Japanese can match Japanese ideophones with their meaning above chance level.
These combined results raise questions: what is general and/or cognitively preferred, what is language-specific and dependent on cultural adaptation?  Are iconic mappings in some languages more transparent to non-speakers, and if so, why? For instance, Japanese and Finnish phonotactics favour the use of open syllables and restrict the use of complex consonant clusters, so the elements changing to mark iconicity may be easy to perceive (see Körtvélyessy 2025: 118-130). We ask: can the full extent of such interactions be reconciled in a common framework?
Main aims
The linguistic phenomenon of (vocal) iconicity would benefit from being scrutinized from the perspectives of cognitive preference, anatomy of the vocal tract, typological tendencies, and patterns of production and perception. We want to examine the interplay between the perceptual and articulatory pressures underlying iconicity, language-specific phonological constraints on its realisation, and environmental and cultural factors shaping cultural-specific iconicity.
Language-specific coding of iconicity. In Dahlgren & Kittilä (2026), we found language-specific coding of the proximal/distal distinction, manifested in three strategies: front-back vowel distinction, front-back consonants, and length differences. We also found reverse-coding of these distinctions in all categories, a phenomenon previously discussed by Johansson and Carlsson (2015): some languages code smallness with back or low vowels, and largeness with front or high vowels, contrary to Ohala’s (1994) theory (e.g., many Asian languages like Bahnar in Vietnam; Diffloth 1994; see also McLean 2026: 2,1-22). In Dahlgren & Kittilä (accepted), we found language-specific coding of onomatopoeia in animal sound imitatives. In a study of six animals in 62 languages, there were cross-linguistic differences for all animal sounds; especially dog barks had language-specific phonological variation (Finnish (FU) hau hau [hɑu]; Arabic (AA) haw haw/hab hab [haw, hab]). Duck sounds had less variation but still frequently followed the language’s phonotactic system in their representation (e.g. Hawaiian kakā [kakaː] while Germanic languages have a Kwak Type).
Environmental or cultural factors. For animal onomatopoeia, there are differences between how domestic and non-domestic animal sounds are coded; furthermore, there are differences between pet sounds. Cats meow uniformly across languages while dogs have a world of variation, also related to the size differences of dog breeds (Ekström & Dahlgren submitted). Global distribution of species may in part affect the onomatopoeia of non-domestic animals: frogs in Thai (op-op [ʔɔp]) sound different from frogs in Dutch (kwak kwak [kwɑk]). Also language contact has a role in the distribution of animal sounds, such as how elephants sound cross-linguistically (Albanian (IE) tyy, trryy [tyː, trːyː], English (IE) toot [tuːt]; Dahlgren & Kittilä accepted). Despite the differences in the language’s phonological systems or the local species, however, transgressions of phonotactic boundaries are surprisingly rare for the sound symbolic coding of onomatopoeia.
From the examples above it seems that while there are some general tendencies within sound symbolism, there are also examples of language-specific coding of sound symbolism and iconicity. Körtvélyessy (2025) suggests that the question of universal and language-specific nature of phonaestemes in onomatopoeia would better be treated as a scale with two opposite ends. McLean (2026: 21) emphasises “flexibility of iconicity”: that iconicity does not need to be universal to influence language as if iconicity is flexible, it can adapt more readily to language change. Dahlgren & Kittilä (2026) show that while sound symbolic coding in demonstratives is often language-specific, it seems to be equally iconic cross-linguistically.
We welcome abstracts on the topics below (but not limited to them); we are particularly interested in typological and theoretical studies.

  *   Phonotactics – when do languages cross the line for sound symbolism, when not?
  *   Do writing systems affect sound symbolism? Is the Arabic production haw/hab for a dog bark a real (language-specific) perception of the dog bark for Arabic speakers, or just a way to write /hau/ in the consonantal writing system?
  *   Sound symbolism overlaps with phonological typology e.g. for demonstratives. What is the relationship between phonological typology and sound symbolism?
  *   Is the relationship between universal and language-specific iconicity a scale with opposite ends, or can the concept of ‘universal’ be extended to a universally motivated iconicity that is filtered through language-specific phonology?


References
Blasi, Damian E., Steven Moran, Scott R. Moisik, Paul Widmer, Dan Dediu, & Balthasar Bickel. 2019. Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration. Science 363(6432). eaav3218.
Dahlgren, Sonja & Kittilä, Seppo. 2026. A phonological typology of demonstratives: A study in iconicity. Linguistics 64(3). 431-471. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0114.
Dahlgren, Sonja & Seppo Kittilä. Accepted. Our pigs say noef: Cross-linguistic variation and language-specific phonemic biases in onomatopoeia. In Valenti Iride, Emmi Tiziana, Sabina Fontana & Salvatore Menza (eds.), Proceedings of XIV International Conference on Iconicity in Language and Literature (ILL 14). Iconicity in Language and Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
D’Anselmo, Anita, Giulia Prete, Przemysław Zdybek, Luca Tommasi, & Alfredo Brancucci. 2019. Guessing meaning from word sounds of unfamiliar languages: A cross-cultural sound symbolism study. Frontiers in Psychology 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00593.
Difflor, Gérard. 1994. i: big, a: small. In Hinton, Leanne, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), Sound symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dingemanse, Mark, Will Schuerman, Eva Reinisch, Sylvia Tufvesson & Holger Mitterer. 2016. What sound symbolism can and cannot do: Testing the iconicity of ideophones from five languages. Language. 92(2). e117-e133.
Ekström, Axel G. & Sonja Dahlgren. Submitted. On the acoustic and perceptual bases of onomatopoeia: A case study of cat meows and dog barks. In Joo, Ian, Kimi Akita & Hinano Iida (eds.), Fifteenth Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature (ILL 15). Iconicity in Language and Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.
Everett, Caleb. 2017. Languages in drier climates use fewer vowels. Frontiers of Psychology 8.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01285
Flaksman, Maria, and Alexander Kilpatrick. 2025. Against the tide: How language-specificity of imitative words increases with time (as evidenced by Surprisal). SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 22(2). 78.
Imai, Mutsumi & Sotaro Kita. 2014. The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B 369. 20130298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0298.
Johansson, Niklas Erben, Andrey Anikin, Gerd Carling & Arthus Holmer. 2020. The typology of sound symbolism: Defining macro-concepts via their semantic and phonetic features. Linguistic Typology 24(2). 253-310.
Johansson, Niklas & Gerd Carling. 2015. The de-iconization and rebuilding of iconicity in spatial deixis: An Indo-European case study. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 47(1). 4-32.
Johansson, Niklas & Jordan Zlatev. 2013. Motivations for sound symbolism in spatial deixis: A typological study of 101 languages. Public Journal of Semiotics 5 (1). 3-20.
Körtvélyessy, Lívia. 2025. Onomatopoeia. The Colorful World of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McLean, Bonnie. 2026. Arbitrary by Accident, Iconic by Design: On the role of motivation in the nature and development of lexicons (Doctoral dissertation, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis).
Ohala, John. 1994. The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), Sound symbolism, 325–347. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ohala, John. 1984. An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice. Phonetica 41(1). 1–16.
Traunmüller, Hartmut. 1994. Sound symbolism in deictic words. In Hans Aili & Peter af Trampe (eds.), Tongues and texts unlimited: Studies in honour of Tore Jansson on the occasion of his sixtieth anniversary, 213–234. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Ultan, Russel. 1978. Size-sound symbolism. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.). Universals of human language, vol. 2, Phonology, 525–568. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Woodworth, Nancy L. 1991. Sound symbolism in proximal and distal forms. Linguistics 29(2). 273–300.

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