ERIC Number: EJ737566
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Apr
Pages: 25
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0361-476X
EISSN: N/A
Sound Symbolic Word Learning in Written Context
Parault, Susan J.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, v31 n2 p228-252 Apr 2006
Sound symbolism is the notion that the relation between word sounds and word meaning is not arbitrary for all words, but rather there is a subset of words in the world's languages for which sounds and their symbols have some degree of correspondence. This research investigates sound symbolism as a possible means of gaining semantic knowledge of unknown words within written context. Two studies assessed adults' expressive knowledge of word meanings for sound symbolic and non-sound symbolic obsolete words. These words were presented in varying types of contextual surroundings: no context, varied context, unhelpful context, and helpful context. In each study, participants were able to generate more correct definitions for sound symbolic words compared to non-sound symbolic words. It is concluded that sound symbolism is a word property which influences the learning of unknown words.
Descriptors: Associative Learning, Phonology, Written Language, Semantics, Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence, Vocabulary Development, Language Processing
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A