37.3219, Confs: Wokrshop at SLE 2027: Experimental Approaches to Lexical Iconicity and Sound Symbolism in Language (Slovakia)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3219. Wed Oct 07 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3219, Confs: Wokrshop at SLE 2027: Experimental Approaches to Lexical Iconicity and Sound Symbolism in Language (Slovakia)

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Date: 05-Oct-2026
From: Dmytro Hrytsu [dmytro.hrytsu at upjs.sk]
Subject: Wokrshop at SLE 2027: Experimental Approaches to Lexical Iconicity and Sound Symbolism in Language


Wokrshop at SLE 2027: Experimental Approaches to Lexical Iconicity and
Sound Symbolism in Language
Short Title: SLE 2027
Theme: Experimental approaches to lexical iconicity and sound
symbolism in language

Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2027/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Psycholinguistics;
Semantics; Typology

Convenors: Dmytro Hrytsu (P.J. Šafárik University in Košice), Thomas
van Hoey (KU Leuven), Adéla Dvořáková (Masaryk University)
Abstract:
Investigation of the perceived resemblance between aspects of
linguistic form and meaning associated with the notion of iconicity
has moved from the margins of linguistic theory to being considered a
foundational property of language, spoken or signed (Dingemanse et al.
2015; Perniss et al. 2010). Iconicity has been shown to facilitate
language development (Imai & Kita 2014; Laing 2019) and contribute to
language processing (Perlman & Lupyan 2018; Sidhu et al. 2020) or
evolution (Perniss & Vigliocco 2014; Imai & Kita 2014; Ćwiek et al.
2021). As Erben Johansson et al. point out, “the area has gone from a
poorly understood field residing on the fringes of linguistics and
semiotics to an area extensively studied from a range of perspectives
and through a wide array of methods” (2020: 254–255).
The growing recognition of iconicity, however, brings an important
methodological problem: how should resemblance between form and
meaning be operationalized and measured? Although iconicity is
generally understood in terms of resemblance, different approaches
construe this resemblance differently. Dingemanse et al. distinguish
between iconicity as a discrete property, a set of different semiotic
relations, and as a gradient property (2020: 3). These perspectives
are not mutually exclusive but encourage different methods and
interpretations of experimental evidence. A related distinction is
made by Motamedi et. al. (2019) between operational and functional
approaches to measuring iconicity. Operational approaches ask what
makes a linguistic form iconic, e.g., which acoustic, articulatory,
visual, or simply structural features resemble the aspects of its
meaning (Motamedi et al. 2019: 3). Functional approaches instead ask
what iconicity does, or more precisely, what role it plays in human
cognition or communication (Motamedi et al. 2019: 3).
Consequently, experimental research on iconicity and sound symbolism
employs an array of diverse methodologies, ranging from
descriptive-intuitive approaches (Marchand 1959; McLean & Dingemanse
2025) to comprehension experiments (Köhler 1929; Sapir 1929), rating
tasks (Winter et al. 2023), production tasks (Körtvélyessy 2024;
Perlman & Lupyan 2018), or iterated learning experiments (Thompson et
al. 2025). The most recent review by Sidhu (2026) similarly shows that
contemporary research comprises explicit forced-choice and implicit
tasks, learning and memory, developmental research, cross-cultural
comparison, and atypicality in populations.
At the same time, experimental iconicity research need not rely
exclusively on behavioural or developmental measurements. Onomatopoeia
provides a particularly informative case because the linguistic form
and the referent sound can be investigated acoustically. Assaneo et
al. (2011) treat onomatopoeia as the transformation of environmental
sound into speech under the anatomical constraints of the vocal
system. Their computational model identifies vocal configurations that
minimize the spectral differences between speech and non-speech
sounds, which are then tested through perceptual experiments (Assaneo
et al. 2011). A recent extension of this approach comes from De Varda
and Marelli (2025), who operationalize iconicity in onomatopoeia as
the objective similarity between spoken forms and natural sounds
associated and test this operationalization against subjective
iconicity ratings. Moreover, recent research extends beyond
experimental phonetics to the field of neuroscience, with
neurolinguistic methods providing complementary evidence concerning
the neural processing of form-meaning mappings (Lockwood et al. 2016;
Barany et al. 2023). Such diversity in methodology raises a question
of experimental validity and comparability. Forced-choice tasks
provide clear quantitative data but may foreground contrasts that are
less salient in natural languages (Motamedi et al. 2019: 7). Rating
tasks provide graded measures and are appropriate for larger samples,
but their outcome depends on how iconicity is explained to
participants and may capture different combinations of perceived
resemblance (Motamedi et al. 2019: 7), while objective similarity
measures are usually confined to onomatopoeia.
This leads McLean & Motamedi (2026) to conclude that no single
operationalization provides complete access to iconicity. Instead,
they advocate a so-called “methodological triangulation” that combines
coded form-meaning correspondences, subjective iconicity ratings, and
objective guessability by naïve listeners (McLean & Motamedi 2026:
674). Recent work by Punselie et al. (2024) utilized this approach and
showed that ideophonic forms with more structural correspondences tend
to be easier to guess and are judged as more iconic. Such
triangulation represents an important direction for future
experimental research in iconicity. Rather than treating any single
rating, matching task, or acoustic metric as a measure of iconicity,
the studies can combine the structural correspondences with different
types of subjective measures to access the bigger picture.
The proposed workshop therefore aims to bring together experimental,
acoustic, computational, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, semantic,
or other approaches to iconicity and sound symbolism. It will be
structured around the following questions:
1.      How should lexical iconicity and sound symbolism be
operationalized, and how do operational and functional approaches
affect the interpretation of results? What are the main challenges
involved in their experimental investigation?
2.      To what extent do different experimental methods (e.g.,
guessability, ratings, production, processing, implicit measures,
etc.) capture distinct aspects of the underlying form-meaning
correspondence? Can pooling different approaches provide more robust
and comparable measures of iconicity and sound symbolism?
3.      How do various linguistic or extralinguistic factors such as
language background, socio-cultural experience, semantic domain,
modality, or context affect the processing of iconic mappings in
experimental settings? How generalizable are experimental approaches?
4.      Are there blind spots that experimental paradigms miss to
capture iconic phenomena? Or overlooked constructs that skew
experimental results? Contributions of this nature should include at
least a comparison with experimental approaches.
We particularly welcome innovative contributions that question and
advance the methodologies for studying lexical iconicity and sound
symbolism in an experimental manner. However, we are also open to more
broadly oriented studies that adopt experimental approaches to develop
the theory and our understanding of these phenomena.
Instructions:
We kindly ask you to send provisional abstracts up to 100 words
excluding references in a PDF format by November 10, 2026, to:
dmytro.hrytsu at upjs.sk, thomas.vanhoey at kuleuven.be, or
adela.dvorakova at phil.muni.cz. In case of workshop approval, the
authors will be asked to submit a 500-word revised abstract.



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