英语音素隐含系统性语义结构，与发音方式相关
Evidence for systematic semantic structure in individual phonemes
- 用大语言模型分析220组字母对比，发现音素具多维语义特征
- 93名母语者85.3%正确匹配音素与语义，跨语言实验准确率73.2%-81.9%
- 发音动作特征可解释56%-98%的语义结构，揭示音义关联的生理基础
语言学一个基本假设认为语音与语义关系基本任意。本文表明该假设在单个音素层面不成立：每个英语音素都携带可从文本中恢复的、多维度的结构化语义特征，跨语言可感知，并与发音方式相关。三个大型语言模型独立检测到220对字母对比中九个感知维度上的稳定语义结构。93名母语英语者在预注册的强制选择任务中，85.3%与模型预测一致；五种类型差异大的语言听众（共155人）在音频呈现下复现了该效应，准确率为73.2%-81.9%。发音特征以交叉验证的R²为0.56-0.98预测语义结构，表明发声动作系统性塑造了音素所传达的意义。这些发现将音素级象似性重新定义为音系系统中普遍存在的具身属性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
A foundational assumption in linguistics holds that sound-meaning relations are largely arbitrary. Here we show that this assumption fails at the level of individual phonemes: each English phoneme carries a structured, multidimensional semantic profile that is recoverable from text, perceived across languages, and grounded in articulation. Three large language models independently detected consistent semantic structure across nine perceptual dimensions in 220 pairwise letter contrasts. Native English speakers (N = 93) confirmed these associations in a preregistered forced-choice task (85.3% agreement with model predictions), and listeners of five typologically diverse languages (N = 155) replicated the effect under audio presentation (73.2%-81.9% accuracy). Articulatory features predicted the structure with cross-validated R^2 of 0.56-0.98, indicating that the bodily act of producing a sound systematically shapes the meaning it conveys. These findings reframe phoneme-level iconicity as a pervasive, embodied property of the phonological system.
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