Cross-linguistic vocal iconicity

Abstract This chapter gives an overview of cross-linguistic vocal iconicity studies, the resemblance-based sound–meaning associations that are found across the globe. The methodological cornerstones of these studies are based on large-scale comparisons of the types of sounds, which occur more often than expected in culturally neutral sets of meanings gathered from diverse samples of languages. This methodology is excellent for yielding descriptive accounts of the meanings and sounds involved in iconic associations but cannot capture all types of vocal iconicity. It can also provide estimations of the prevalence of iconicity, but only in the core of the lexicon. The future of this field is directed toward improving meaning and language sampling to better assess how regular language change and language contact affect sound–meaning associations, including data from different linguistic repertoires to limit biases stemming from formalized language varieties and writing, and testing proposed iconic associations through experimental and computational approaches.