Descripción del proyecto
THE STARTING POINT FOR THE PROJECT IS THE FINDING (RESULTING FROM A PREVIOUS OWN RESEARCH PROJECT) THAT AVERAGE VALENCE AND AROUSAL RATINGS FORABOUT 5000 WORDS IN ENGLISH, SPANISH AND GERMAN CAN BE PREDICTED TO A SMALL BUT HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT (2% OF VARIANCE EXPLAINED)BASED ON THEIR SUBLEXICAL PHONOLOGICAL STRUCTURE, MOREOVER, SIMILAR PRINCIPLES SEEM TO DETERMINE THIS APPARENT FORM TO MEANINGCORRESPONDENCES INVOLVING BASIC DIMENSIONS OF AFFECT ACROSS THE THREE LANGUAGES: SIMILAR PHONEMES IN ALL THREE LANGUAGES APPEAR TOSERVE AS SUBLEXICAL MARKERS OF HIGH AROUSAL AND NEGATIVE VALENCE,IN THE PRESENT PROJECT, WE ADDRESS THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS CONCERNING A POTENTIAL AFFECTIVE ICONIC ORGANIZATION OF PHONEME DISTRIBUTIONACROSS THE VOCABULARY OF LANGUAGES:ARE SUCH APPARENT CORRELATIONS MERELY IDIOSYNCRATIC BY-PRODUCTS OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION WITHIN SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE INDO-EUROPEANLANGUAGE FAMILY (0 HYPOTHESIS), OR- DO THEY POSSESS PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY, IN THAT LANGUAGE USERS ARE SENSITIVE TO THESE PHENOMENA AND ASSIGN AFFECTIVE MEANING TOSUBLEXICAL PHONOLOGICAL STRUCTURES ACCORDINGLY?- WOULD THESE AFFECTIVE FORM-TO-MEANING CORRESPONDENCES - FOUND IN ONE LANGUAGE - GENERALIZE ACROSS LINGÜISTIC BOUNDARIES AND INFLUENCEAFFECTIVE PERCEPTION ALSO FOR SPEAKERS OF A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE?- WITHIN AND BEYOND THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE FAMILY?RESULTS AS FORMULATED IN THE LATTER HYPOTHESES WOULD STRONGLY POINT TOWARDS A UNIVERSAL NATURE OF THE PHENOMENON, AND WOULD FURTHERSUGGEST THAT THESE FORM MEANING CORRESPONDENCES ARISE FROM THE AFFECTIVE GROUNDING OF LANGUAGE USING AN INTERNAL RELATION BETWEEN THEACOUSTIC PROPRIETIES OF LANGUAGE SOUNDS AND AFFECTIVE MEANING,IN A SERIES OF BEHAVIOURAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, EEG AND FMRI EXPERIMENTS WE AIM AT FURTHER EXPLORING WHETHER AFFECTIVE SOUND-MEANINGCONSISTENCIES INFLUENCE AUTOMATIC STAGES OF LANGUAGE PROCESSING, E,G, LEXICAL ACCESS (AFFECTING THE AMPLITUDE OF THE N400 AS ACONSEQUENCE OF AFFECTIVE FORM-MEANING INCONGRUENCY), AND WHETHER BRAIN STRUCTURES CLASSICALLY RELATED TO AFFECTIVE PROCESSING (E,G,AMYGDALA) WOULD PROVE SENSITIVE TO THE MANIPULATION OF ASSUMED SUBLEXICAL AFFECTIVE VALUES (DERIVED FROM OUR LARGE SCALE LEXICAL AFFECTIVEDATABASES) - ACCORDING TO OUR HYPOTHESIS OF AFFECTIVE GROUNDING OF BASIC LINGUISTIC SIGNS DETERMINING THE ORGANIZATION OF LANGUAGE, EMOCION\SUBLEXICAL\FONOLOGIA\EEG\FMRI\ICONOS\LENGUAJE