Shared and Distinct Phonemic Features in Sound-Shape and Sound-Size Correspondences: A Study of Mandarin Chinese

Certain speech sounds are consistently associated with visual properties such as shape and size, a phenomenon known as crossmodal correspondences. Well-established examples demonstrate that the vowel /u/ is often linked to rounder and larger objects, while /i/ is associated with more angular and smaller ones. However, most previous research utilized English pseudowords, leaving a gap in our understanding of how these correspondences manifest in tonal languages. The current study extends the investigation to Mandarin Chinese, a tonal language, to examine the roles of vowels, consonants, and lexical tones in sound-shape and sound-size correspondences. Participants heard consonant-vowel-tone syllables and rated each on a 5-point scale with rounder/more angular shapes or larger/smaller icons at opposite ends. The results confirmed the established vowel effect: /u/ was associated with rounder and larger patterns than /i/. Results for consonants demonstrated that the voiced-unvoiced contrast predicted sound-shape judgments, while the aspirated-unaspirated contrast, which is less prominent in English, influenced sound-size judgments. Lexical tones also revealed systematic effects, with Tone 1 (flat), Tone 2 (rising), Tone 3 (falling-rising), and Tone 4 (falling) progressively matched from rounder to more angular shapes, while Tones 1 and 2 were linked to larger sizes than Tones 3 and 4. These phonemic features reliably predicted crossmodal correspondences even when controlling for acoustic properties, suggesting robust mappings between phonemic and visual representations. This study highlights the common vowel effects across Mandarin and English while revealing unique influences of consonants and lexical tones, underscoring the role of language experience in shaping crossmodal correspondences.