# The affective iconicity of segment and tone in Standard Chinese

## TL;DR

This study explores how sounds and tones in Chinese influence how people perceive emotions in words.

## Contribution

The study reveals that suprasegmental tones have a stronger influence on emotional perception than segmental phonemes in Chinese.

## Key findings

- Lexical tones are more influential than segmental phonemes in biasing affective ratings.
- Falling and rising tones are associated with higher arousal ratings compared to high- and low-dipping tones.
- Vowels correlate with valence ratings, while consonants correlate with arousal ratings.

## Abstract

While both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of words have been recognised as potential factors influencing their iconic interpretations, how these components collectively drive the associations of form and affective meaning remains elusive. The current study addressed this issue in a lexical tonal language, Standard Chinese, where suprasegmental pitch information distinguishes word meanings. Specifically, we investigated how phonemic information at both the segmental level (i.e., vowels and consonants) and suprasegmental level (i.e., lexical tones) may influence native Standard Chinese listeners’ rating of auditory stimuli’s emotional arousal and valence in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. The results indicated a consistent correlation between tones and the perceived arousal and valence ratings of the tone-carrying nonce words. At the segmental level, consonants were more consistently associated with arousal, while vowels correlated with valence. Furthermore, lexical tones were more influential than segmental phonemes in biasing listeners’ rating of affective meanings. Regarding arousal ratings, nonce words with falling and rising tones tended to be rated with higher arousal than those with high- and low-dipping tones. Additionally, those with an onset /t/ were rated higher in arousal than those with /n/. Regarding valence ratings, nonce words with falling and low-dipping tones were more likely to receive negative ratings than those with high and rising tones. Moreover, stimuli with /u/ were more inclined to be perceived negatively than those with /i/. Though subtle and sporadic, these findings support the universal tendency of affective iconicity across segments and suprasegmental tones.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-025-02849-5.