Theoretical linguists have hypothesized that the vocalization of the initial consonants in Japanese sound-symbolic wordsaffect their psychological evaluations. By using 5-point semantic differential scales associated with 13 psycholinguis-tic features (familiarity, visual imagery, auditory imagery, haptic imagery, arousal, preference, disgust, hardness, soft-ness, heaviness, lightness, fastness, and slowness), we asked 36 Japanese participants to evaluate sound-symbolic wordswith voiceless (SSWVL; e.g., kirakira) or voiced initial consonants (SSWV; e.g., giragira) in experiment 1, whereas weasked them to evaluate sound-symbolic words with semi-voiced consonants (SSWSV; e.g., pochapocha) or SSWV (e.g.,bochabocha) in experiment 2. Results of experiments 1 and 2 showed that the participants had higher levels of disgust,arousal, hardness, heaviness, and slowness for SSWV as opposed to SSWVL and SSWSV (ps ¡ .05). In sum, these find-ings suggest that the presence of vocalization of initial consonants in Japanese sound-symbolic words contribute to theirpsychological evaluations to sound-symbolic words.

Previous studies have hypothesized that Japanese sound-symbolic words with voiced initial consonants (SSWV; e.g.,boroboro) rather than those with voiceless initial consonants (SSWVL; e.g., horohoro) or semi-voiced initial consonants(SSWSV; e.g., poroporo) induce stronger evaluations of the quality of psycholinguistic features. To investigate this hy-pothesis, we asked 36 Japanese participants to evaluate 13 psycholinguistic features (familiarity, visual imagery, auditoryimagery, haptic imagery, arousal, preference, disgust, hardness, softness, heaviness, lightness, fastness, and slowness) withSSWV, SSWVL, and SSWSV using 5-point semantic differential scales. All the initial consonants involved h (f; SSWVL),p (SSWSV), or b (SSWV). The experimental results showed that SSWV included higher levels of visual imagery, auditoryimagery, haptic imagery, arousal, disgust, hardness, and heaviness over SSWVL or SSWSV (ps ¡ .05). Taken together,these findings suggest that SSWV induces psychological and physical quality evaluations more than SSWVL and SSWSV.