[Comprehension of synesthetic expressions: cross-modal modifications of sense adjectives]

This study examined (a) acceptability of phrases whose modifier adjective and head noun refer to different sense modalities, and (b) such cross-modal adjective properties by means of similarity judgment of these phrases. In Experiment 1, 58 subjects rated 60 sense adjectives as to their acceptability in modifying nine modality-denoting nouns (touch, taste, smell; color, sound; memory, mood, idea, personality). The phrases were rated highly acceptable when the adjectives denoting lower-modal qualities were combined with the nouns denoting higher-modal contents (e.g., soft sound, sweet mood, bright memory). In Experiment 2, two groups of 30 subjects judged the similarity of the highly acceptable phrases for each of the nine modality-denoting nouns. Multidimensional scaling of these data revealed two- and three-dimensional configurations of the adjectives for each modality-denoting noun. Multiple regression analysis indicated that two independently rated properties, pleasantness and intensity, provided a satisfactory interpretation of each configuration. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that most of the first- and second-order canonical correlations among the nine three-dimensional configurations were significant. These results suggest that there is a common dimension of sense adjectives across different modalities.