I think it’s a matter of associative semantics / onomatopoeia and the shape of the mouth when making sounds (which I’ve just found out has a technical term - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manner_of_articulation )
For instance, “bouba” sounds like ball, boule, boob, booby and the lips form a pursed “o” shape when saying the made-up word.
Similarly, “kiki” sounds similar to spiky, prickly, kick, kinky, all of which have spiky, sharp or forceful connotations. And the “ki” and “ick” mouth shapes are flat, with the lips pulling outward to form a line – like a sharp object, rather than a circle.
Perhaps these factors subconsciously contribute to our assignment of shape and textural characteristics for the made-up words.
That’s my amateur linguist’s take on things.
Agreed. You can even take it a layer deeper and argue the physical waveforms reflect the same trend:
Bouba is a cleaner, smoother pattern with a few dominant frequencies while kiki is a chaotic signal all over the spectrographic map.
Did you read the article? Mouth shape has ZERO relevance to this study
I confess, I usually read the article, but this was a hot take, so I appreciate the correction.
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