声音概念垂直空间隐喻表征的初步探讨

A Preliminary Study on the Vertical Spatial Metaphor of Sound Concept Evoked by Sound Words

本文通过2个实验,初步探讨汉语声音词的垂直空间隐喻表征。实验1先视觉呈现声音词,要求被试对随后在屏幕上方或者下方呈现的图形进行形状判断;实验2要求被试先对声音词进行音高判断,再判断图形。结果只在实验2中发现隐喻表征,说明声音词垂直空间隐喻表征的激活需要一定的条件。后期问卷调查发现,声音词普遍存在多种表象,且声音在这众多表象中并不是最先被激活的。意味着声音词垂直空间隐喻表征的激活需要较高的声音音高维度的语义凸显度,需要对声音概念进行较深层次的语义加工。

The terms high and low are spatial terms that are commonly used for categorizing the space. Interestingly, when describing sounds, the spatial terms high and low are often used too. Referring to pitch in purely spatial terms therefore suggests that the spatial words high and low are not a non-literal interpretation here, as musical pitch in principle does not imply as partial location. It reflects a cognitive mapping of two different domains between space and pitch height. That is a state of affairs which is often referred to as a conceptual metaphor. Sound has two main forms in our life： physical sound and conceptual sound. At present, the research about the physical sound shows that physical sound has a metaphorical representation. Does the conceptual sound have the metaphorical representation, just as the physical sound？ Here, language describing auditory events provides an ideal opportunity to investigate spatial simulation effects in situations where the word is used in a nonliteral context. Some studies about the relationship between the text or sentences describing sounds and the spatial space have been found. However, there are some extra components in texts and sentences which may disturb the consistence effect between sound concepts and the spatial space. Words are different from texts and the sentences, with less images or other influential components. To know if the consistence effect between concepts and spatial space exactly exists, it is necessary to use the sound words as the experiment materials. Two experiments were used to investigate the existence of the sound words’ vertical spatial metaphor. Priming paradigm with horizontal keyboard was used. In the two experiments, sound words were first presented in the middle of the screen, a square or a circle was presented on the 25% or the 75% of the screen. In experiment 1, the sound words were passively observed, and participants were only asked to judge whether the shape presented later was square or circle. In experiment 2, participants were asked to judge the pitch of the sound words first, and then judge the shape. Experiment 1 found that the sound words did not affect the judgment of the shape presented in different vertical spaces. Experiment 2 found that the sound words with high pitch promoted the judgment of the top shape, and the sound words with low pitch promoted the judgment of the bottom shape.The study showed that metaphorical consistency effect was only observed in the experiment 2 which the semantic of the words were deeply processed. That meant the vertical spatial metaphor of sound words was weak or unstable. The depth of the semantic processing of sound words and the images evoked by sound words might explain. Another afterword questionnaire brought out that sound words commonly consisted a variety of images. However, among those images, sound was not usually the first one to be evoked. It meant that the activation of the vertical space metaphor of sound words needed to be more explicit in the semantics of the sound dimension, that was, sound words’ vertical metaphoric could only occur in the case of deep-level semantic processing.