Cross-linguistic sound symbolism and crossmodal correspondence: Evidence from fMRI and DTI

•Listeners use cross-linguistic sound-to-meaning mappings to interpret foreign words.•Increased activation for sound symbolic words in left superior parietal cortex.•Correlation between individual sensitivity to sound symbolism and FA in left SLF.•Parietal crossmodal correspondences underlie sound symbolism in spoken language.

Non-arbitrary correspondences between spoken words and categories of meanings exist in natural language, with mounting evidence that listeners are sensitive to this sound symbolic information. Native English speakers were asked to choose the meaning of spoken foreign words from one of four corresponding antonym pairs selected from a previously developed multi-language stimulus set containing both sound symbolic and non-symbolic stimuli. In behavioral (n = 9) and fMRI (n = 15) experiments, participants showed reliable sensitivity to the sound symbolic properties of the stimulus set, selecting the consistent meaning for the sound symbolic words at above chances rates. There was increased activation for sound symbolic relative to non-symbolic words in left superior parietal cortex, and a cluster in left superior longitudinal fasciculus showed a positive correlation between fractional anisotropy (FA) and an individual’s sensitivity to sound symbolism. These findings support the idea that crossmodal correspondences underlie sound symbolism in spoken language.