Typological Observations on Synesthetic Sound Symbolism in the Indigenous Languages of Colombia
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| Author: | |
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| Format: | artículo original |
| Status: | Versión publicada |
| Publication Date: | 2025 |
| Description: | Synesthetic sound symbolism is identified in the connection between phonetic patterns and non-auditory elements, such as colors, textures, shapes, smells, and flavors. This study analyzes the characteristics of this type of sound association in indigenous languages of Colombia through structural and areal typology criteria. To achieve this, Swadesh lists from 36 languages that met comparable visual criteria were analyzed, along with the acoustic properties of vowels and consonants. The results were gathered to generate maps, proposing two areal sets: the minimum separation between the colombian macroarea and the Guajira Peninsula, and a quadripartite group which is formed by the Wayuunaiki zone, the Vaupés, Andoque, and the western periphery zone; the Gente de Centro (Echeverri, 2022) and Vichada zone, and the set of most of the Andean zone with discontinuous Eastern Amazonian zone. Regarding the structural level, the study finds that voiceless consonants are often used to express smallness, luminosity, and pointed shapes, while open vowels are the most common sound class to represent ideas related to greatness, darkness, and roundness. |
| Country: | Portal de Revistas UCR |
| Institution: | Universidad de Costa Rica |
| Repositorio: | Portal de Revistas UCR |
| Language: | Español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:portal.ucr.ac.cr:article/63515 |
| Online Access: | https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/filyling/article/view/63515 |
| Keyword: | Indigenous languages of Colombia sound properties synesthetic sound symbolism areal typology structural typology Lenguas indígenas de Colombia propiedades sonoras simbolismo sonoro sinestésico tipología areal tipología estructural |