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Abstract
A fundamental assumption regarding spoken language is that the relationship between
sound and meaning is essentially arbitrary. The present investigation questioned this
arbitrariness assumption by examining the influence of potential non-arbitrary mappings
between sound and meaning on word learning in adults. Native English-speaking monolinguals
learned meanings for Japanese words in a vocabulary-learning task. Spoken Japanese
words were paired with English meanings that: (1) matched the actual meaning of the
Japanese word (e.g., "hayai" paired with fast); (2) were antonyms for the actual meaning
(e.g., "hayai" paired with slow); or (3) were randomly selected from the set of antonyms
(e.g., "hayai" paired with blunt). The results showed that participants learned the
actual English equivalents and antonyms for Japanese words more accurately and responded
faster than when learning randomly paired meanings. These findings suggest that natural
languages contain non-arbitrary links between sound structure and meaning and further,
that learners are sensitive to these non-arbitrary relationships within spoken language.