Ideasthesia

[Jobar]

Perhaps relevant here:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[WAB]

[and...now for something completely...um...well um...similar, yes. Similar That's it. *John Cleese voice*]

Woody/Tinny

 

[WAB]

One more....

So, when does Copernicus, the cunning linguist, enter the thread?







*rimshot*

 

[PyramidHead]

Isn't this just a straightforward example of onomatopoeia? We know of many curved, rounded objects and if we had to pick one, the sound they make when they hit a surface is closer to "bouba" than "kiki." The reverse is true for the sharp and spiky objects. The names are like sound effects, and our brains just match the sound effect to the object we can most easily imagine making it.

 

[WAB]

That makes sense, PyramidHead, and so does what bigfield said. The letter K has rather sharp looking angles, while the letter B has soft curves.

Still, 98%! I would think that maybe 10%, at least, might decide to go counter intuitive and say the opposite of their immediate impression?

 

[Copernicus]

View attachment 15556

Which one is Kiki? Which one is Bouba?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

Let's just start with the more familiar concept of onomatopoeia--the association between speech sounds that comprise words and the concepts they refer to. Onomatopoeia differs across languages (see  cross-linguistic onomatopoeia), but there are still remarkable similarities even across unrelated languages like Armenian and Basque. The associations themselves are between strings of phonemes (primary speech sounds) and noises that we are familiar with.

In the above case, we are associating sounds with images, or perhaps noises that we associate with those images. What noises or sounds would you associate with those pictures? I surmise that the one on the left looks more like a splatter or "sharp" sound. The one on the right looks more like a liquid sound. The former is short and high-pitched. The latter is more prolonged and low-pitched. The sound is inherently shorter and has more energy concentrated in higher frequencies than the sound. So maybe that has something to do with the tendency to distinguish the pictures on the basis of sound associations alone.

The relationship between phonetics and other concepts is actually quite a bit more varied and complex than we get with the kiki effect. There are also restrictions on the word order of compounds, doublets, and other kinds of phrases across many languages. I once had the pleasure of hosting a seminar class at Columbia University by an MIT Professor, John Robert (Haj) Ross, who was in the throes of studying this phenomenon. So I got to participate in (and learn a lot from) his investigations. He and a Professor William Cooper co-authored a very nice paper on the subject called World Order. They examined a huge number of fixed-order expressions that they called "freezes". The point of their study was to catalogue all of the reasons they could come up with to explain this rather puzzling phenomenon. One of the strongest factors happened to be the order of speech sounds in words--where shorter sounds tended to precede longer ones. So it sounds more natural to say "flim flam" rather than "flam flim" or "bing bong" rather than "bong bing". In fact, these freezes are ubiquitous in human languages, and many of the same factors seem to drive the order.

 

[WAB]

Thanks, Copernicus.

Nonetheless, I must ask one thing, because, while I have seen such things explained ad infinitum, especially with regard to Latin scansion, as in such things as Virgil's beautiful line:

quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum
horsies galloping, etc.


Voices [nunc simul celeriter]: Cut to the chase, William! [skip a little brother, for Python fans]:

For some reason, I don't understand what makes "flim" shorter than "flam", or "bing shorter than "bong".

 

[Copernicus]

Thanks, Copernicus.

Nonetheless, I must ask one thing, because, while I have seen such things explained ad infinitum, especially with regard to Latin scansion, as in such things as Virgil's beautiful line:

quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum
horsies galloping, etc.


Voices [nunc simul celeriter]: Cut to the chase, William! [skip a little brother, for Python fans]:

For some reason, I don't understand what makes "flim" shorter than "flam", or "bing shorter than "bong".

Good question. If one actually measures vowel lengths, those vowels formed with the mouth maximally open and the tongue in a depressed position do tend to be sustained longer. I believe that the answer to your question lies in the nature of the way the vocal apparatus works. All spoken languages produce words as sequences of syllables. Syllables are formed by opening and closing the mouth. At the peripheries of syllables are consonants, which are formed by closures in the oral cavity that restrict the flow of air. The syllable peak is a vowel, which is formed by opening the mouth to allow free flow of air. So the mouth produces syllable sequences of close-open-close-open-etc.

Now consider the vowels (in "beet"), (in "bit"), [æ] in (in "bat"), and [ɔ] (in "bought"). The first two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively closed and the bulk of the tongue in a high position. The last two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively open and the tongue in a low position. Hence, high vowels leave the oral cavity in a position to form consonants more easily and quickly than the low vowels, since what makes a sound a consonant is blockage of air flow. IOW, high vowels are going to be inherently shorter than low vowels because of the positioning of the organs in the speech cavity.

 

[WAB]

Thanks, Copernicus.

Nonetheless, I must ask one thing, because, while I have seen such things explained ad infinitum, especially with regard to Latin scansion, as in such things as Virgil's beautiful line:

quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum
horsies galloping, etc.


Voices [nunc simul celeriter]: Cut to the chase, William! [skip a little brother, for Python fans]:

For some reason, I don't understand what makes "flim" shorter than "flam", or "bing shorter than "bong".

Good question. If one actually measures vowel lengths, those vowels formed with the mouth maximally open and the tongue in a depressed position do tend to be sustained longer. I believe that the answer to your question lies in the nature of the way the vocal apparatus works. All spoken languages produce words as sequences of syllables. Syllables are formed by opening and closing the mouth. At the peripheries of syllables are consonants, which are formed by closures in the oral cavity that restrict the flow of air. The syllable peak is a vowel, which is formed by opening the mouth to allow free flow of air. So the mouth produces syllable sequences of close-open-close-open-etc.

Now consider the vowels (in "beet"), (in "bit"), [æ] in (in "bat"), and [ɔ] (in "bought"). The first two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively closed and the bulk of the tongue in a high position. The last two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively open and the tongue in a low position. Hence, high vowels leave the oral cavity in a position to form consonants more easily and quickly than the low vowels, since what makes a sound a consonant is blockage of air flow. IOW, high vowels are going to be inherently shorter than low vowels because of the positioning of the organs in the speech cavity.

Thank you! You have a great talent for putting these things in lay terms. I resist using words like that, since I detest anything that smacks of classism. One more query, at the risk of pestering you: who is that impressive looking rake in your avatar?

Mine, in case anyone should wonder, is Giotto's portrait of Beatrice Cenci, a wonderful painting of a young lady in a tragic position. She killed her father, because he was a monster and had raped her several times, and for this act of virtue (as far as I'm concerned), she was executed.

 

[Copernicus]

One of my languages is Breton, which I did some work on in the 1970s. The image is of Yann ar Soniou an dall (Blind Yann the Singer). He lived at the beginning of the 20th century. In this picture, he is wearing the traditional "bragou bras" ("big britches") of old Brittany. (See https://www.akg-images.fr/archive/Bretagne---L'aveugle-Yann-ar-Soniou-2UMEBMH7FG51.html)

 

[WAB]

Thanks!

Now, of course, I am totally compelled to look into this man, since I love poetry and music, and being that they are the only things I was ever any good at. Homer is reputed to have been a blind singer.



[no, not that Homer. D'oh!] < Humour!

 

[Subsymbolic]

Thanks, Copernicus.

Nonetheless, I must ask one thing, because, while I have seen such things explained ad infinitum, especially with regard to Latin scansion, as in such things as Virgil's beautiful line:

quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum
horsies galloping, etc.


Voices [nunc simul celeriter]: Cut to the chase, William! [skip a little brother, for Python fans]:

For some reason, I don't understand what makes "flim" shorter than "flam", or "bing shorter than "bong".

Good question. If one actually measures vowel lengths, those vowels formed with the mouth maximally open and the tongue in a depressed position do tend to be sustained longer. I believe that the answer to your question lies in the nature of the way the vocal apparatus works. All spoken languages produce words as sequences of syllables. Syllables are formed by opening and closing the mouth. At the peripheries of syllables are consonants, which are formed by closures in the oral cavity that restrict the flow of air. The syllable peak is a vowel, which is formed by opening the mouth to allow free flow of air. So the mouth produces syllable sequences of close-open-close-open-etc.

Now consider the vowels (in "beet"), (in "bit"), [æ] in (in "bat"), and [ɔ] (in "bought"). The first two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively closed and the bulk of the tongue in a high position. The last two sounds are pronounced with the jaw relatively open and the tongue in a low position. Hence, high vowels leave the oral cavity in a position to form consonants more easily and quickly than the low vowels, since what makes a sound a consonant is blockage of air flow. IOW, high vowels are going to be inherently shorter than low vowels because of the positioning of the organs in the speech cavity.

Thank you! You have a great talent for putting these things in lay terms. I resist using words like that, since I detest anything that smacks of classism. One more query, at the risk of pestering you: who is that impressive looking rake in your avatar?

Mine, in case anyone should wonder, is Giotto's portrait of Beatrice Cenci, a wonderful painting of a young lady in a tragic position. She killed her father, because he was a monster and had raped her several times, and for this act of virtue (as far as I'm concerned), she was executed.

As I said:

I think this one is for Cop as he’s the word expert.

Personally I'd probably add something about one way that information is ordered in the brain. It's quite clear that some information in the brain is represented in the sort of way Plato thought it was. As a simple metaphor, think of a sheet of paper with a collage of, say, dogs, on it. somewhere in the middle of the collage will be the prototypical dog surrounded by almost prototypical dogs and slowly shading out, in different directions, towards dogs that, say, look rather like cats or wolves or rabbits. Each of these then shade in towards say, the prototypical gavagai.

Now imagine that in slightly more dimensions and with a few more variables represented in varying directions. The contents that give rise to word production end up slotted away like that, as do most things we need to represent. All of these things can be brought closer or further, bound and loosed based on sod knows what. Sometimes this can give rise to analogy, sometimes synesthesia.

I suspect that listening isn't what allows us to catch subtle differences in phoneme length, but production - listening can be pretty fast and loose with the timings, while production has to get what is a complex ballistic action across lungs, larynx, tongue, lips and so on, spot on or all that comes out is garble. This would have to keep the mappings and pathways pretty damn precise in timings and would mean that the state spaces would be well defined in a way that most areas are not.

As for avatars, I feel lowbrow. At least it's not another watch.

 

[WAB]

Thank you! You have a great talent for putting these things in lay terms. I resist using words like that, since I detest anything that smacks of classism. One more query, at the risk of pestering you: who is that impressive looking rake in your avatar?

Mine, in case anyone should wonder, is Giotto's portrait of Beatrice Cenci, a wonderful painting of a young lady in a tragic position. She killed her father, because he was a monster and had raped her several times, and for this act of virtue (as far as I'm concerned), she was executed.

As I said:

I think this one is for Cop as he’s the word expert.

Personally I'd probably add something about one way that information is ordered in the brain. It's quite clear that some information in the brain is represented in the sort of way Plato thought it was. As a simple metaphor, think of a sheet of paper with a collage of, say, dogs, on it. somewhere in the middle of the collage will be the prototypical dog surrounded by almost prototypical dogs and slowly shading out, in different directions, towards dogs that, say, look rather like cats or wolves or rabbits. Each of these then shade in towards say, the prototypical gavagai.

Now imagine that in slightly more dimensions and with a few more variables represented in varying directions. The contents that give rise to word production end up slotted away like that, as do most things we need to represent. All of these things can be brought closer or further, bound and loosed based on sod knows what. Sometimes this can give rise to analogy, sometimes synesthesia.

I suspect that listening isn't what allows us to catch subtle differences in phoneme length, but production - listening can be pretty fast and loose with the timings, while production has to get what is a complex ballistic action across lungs, larynx, tongue, lips and so on, spot on or all that comes out is garble. This would have to keep the mappings and pathways pretty damn precise in timings and would mean that the state spaces would be well defined in a way that most areas are not.

As for avatars, I feel lowbrow. At least it's not another watch.

Speaking of erasures, or perhaps the way the mind goes about doing what it does:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57598/poem-this-poem-is-not-addressed-to-you

 

[Subsymbolic]

As I said:



Personally I'd probably add something about one way that information is ordered in the brain. It's quite clear that some information in the brain is represented in the sort of way Plato thought it was. As a simple metaphor, think of a sheet of paper with a collage of, say, dogs, on it. somewhere in the middle of the collage will be the prototypical dog surrounded by almost prototypical dogs and slowly shading out, in different directions, towards dogs that, say, look rather like cats or wolves or rabbits. Each of these then shade in towards say, the prototypical gavagai.

Now imagine that in slightly more dimensions and with a few more variables represented in varying directions. The contents that give rise to word production end up slotted away like that, as do most things we need to represent. All of these things can be brought closer or further, bound and loosed based on sod knows what. Sometimes this can give rise to analogy, sometimes synesthesia.

I suspect that listening isn't what allows us to catch subtle differences in phoneme length, but production - listening can be pretty fast and loose with the timings, while production has to get what is a complex ballistic action across lungs, larynx, tongue, lips and so on, spot on or all that comes out is garble. This would have to keep the mappings and pathways pretty damn precise in timings and would mean that the state spaces would be well defined in a way that most areas are not.

As for avatars, I feel lowbrow. At least it's not another watch.

Speaking of erasures, or perhaps the way the mind goes about doing what it does:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57598/poem-this-poem-is-not-addressed-to-you

I'll need to think about that one. Mine is more like this:

All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace
Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,
Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.

 

[WAB]

As I said:



Personally I'd probably add something about one way that information is ordered in the brain. It's quite clear that some information in the brain is represented in the sort of way Plato thought it was. As a simple metaphor, think of a sheet of paper with a collage of, say, dogs, on it. somewhere in the middle of the collage will be the prototypical dog surrounded by almost prototypical dogs and slowly shading out, in different directions, towards dogs that, say, look rather like cats or wolves or rabbits. Each of these then shade in towards say, the prototypical gavagai.

Now imagine that in slightly more dimensions and with a few more variables represented in varying directions. The contents that give rise to word production end up slotted away like that, as do most things we need to represent. All of these things can be brought closer or further, bound and loosed based on sod knows what. Sometimes this can give rise to analogy, sometimes synesthesia.

I suspect that listening isn't what allows us to catch subtle differences in phoneme length, but production - listening can be pretty fast and loose with the timings, while production has to get what is a complex ballistic action across lungs, larynx, tongue, lips and so on, spot on or all that comes out is garble. This would have to keep the mappings and pathways pretty damn precise in timings and would mean that the state spaces would be well defined in a way that most areas are not.

As for avatars, I feel lowbrow. At least it's not another watch.

Speaking of erasures, or perhaps the way the mind goes about doing what it does:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57598/poem-this-poem-is-not-addressed-to-you

I'll need to think about that one. Mine is more like this:

All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace
Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,
Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.

Well, that rhymes (score!), and it's deftly metrical (score!), but I don't recognize it (dammit! ), which is odd because my noodle is a veritable compendium of well-known English language poetry.

Did you write that?

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'll need to think about that one. Mine is more like this:

All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace
Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,
Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.

Well, that rhymes (score!), and it's deftly metrical (score!), but I don't recognize it (dammit! ), which is odd because my noodle is a veritable compendium of well-known English language poetry.

Did you write that?

Nope, it's Christina Rossetti. She's terribly underrated.

 

[WAB]

DAMMIT!!!!!!

Now I'm really upset. I adore her and her brother, and the whole post-Raphaelite movement, or whatever it was called.*

My brain is in shambles.

I agree that she is underrated, as are most of the women from that period. C19 has a plethora of amazing female authors and poets: the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning, the AMAZING Edith Wharton, etc, the list goes on and on and on and on...

This is a wonderful site, a compendium of famous and lesser known female authors. Perhaps you know of it:

http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/


*I can't believe I had to look it up! It was the pre-Raphaelite movement.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Now I'm really upset. I adore her and her brother, and the whole post-Raphaelite movement, or whatever it was called.*

My brain is in shambles.

I agree that she is underrated, as are most of the women from that period. C19 has a plethora of amazing female authors and poets: the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning, the AMAZING Edith Wharton, etc, the list goes on and on and on and on...

This is a wonderful site, a compendium of famous and lesser known female authors. Perhaps you know of it:

http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/


*I can't believe I had to look it up! It was the pre-Raphaelite movement.

Have something completely different - but another favourite:

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

 

[WAB]

Now I'm really upset. I adore her and her brother, and the whole post-Raphaelite movement, or whatever it was called.*

My brain is in shambles.

I agree that she is underrated, as are most of the women from that period. C19 has a plethora of amazing female authors and poets: the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning, the AMAZING Edith Wharton, etc, the list goes on and on and on and on...

This is a wonderful site, a compendium of famous and lesser known female authors. Perhaps you know of it:

http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/


*I can't believe I had to look it up! It was the pre-Raphaelite movement.

Have something completely different - but another favourite:

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Wow, exquisite! I had not read this before. She sounds like she was really in the zone during this one. It sounds almost like Gerard Manly Hopkins' Sprung Rhythm, but I don't know if she read him? Hopkins' work didn't get widely known until Robert Bridges published his complete work after Hopkins' death.

Also a lot of Swinburne in there.

I don't know if you noticed, but I put a Christina Rossetti poem in the poetry thread, dedicated to you. I think Christine was probably a finer poet than her brother, and she is head and shoulders above the Brontes.

Have you read any of the more modern female geniuses? Namely Marianne Moore? MM was wickedly expert, sublimely good. Also Sylvia Plath.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Now I'm really upset. I adore her and her brother, and the whole post-Raphaelite movement, or whatever it was called.*

My brain is in shambles.

I agree that she is underrated, as are most of the women from that period. C19 has a plethora of amazing female authors and poets: the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning, the AMAZING Edith Wharton, etc, the list goes on and on and on and on...

This is a wonderful site, a compendium of famous and lesser known female authors. Perhaps you know of it:

http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/


*I can't believe I had to look it up! It was the pre-Raphaelite movement.

Have something completely different - but another favourite:

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Wow, exquisite! I had not read this before. She sounds like she was really in the zone during this one. It sounds almost like Gerard Manly Hopkins' Sprung Rhythm, but I don't know if she read him? Hopkins' work didn't get widely known until Robert Bridges published his complete work after Hopkins' death.

Also a lot of Swinburne in there.

I don't know if you noticed, but I put a Christina Rossetti poem in the poetry thread, dedicated to you. I think Christine was probably a finer poet than her brother, and she is head and shoulders above the Brontes.

Have you read any of the more modern female geniuses? Namely Marianne Moore? MM was wickedly expert, sublimely good. Also Sylvia Plath.

It is Hopkins - good spot!