【解答例】
Ⅰ
問1 M音は発音したときに口の中で滑らかに感じられ，その感覚が象徴的に円い物体の滑らかさを思い起こさせるから。(50字)
問2 音や物体などの間にパターンや関連性を見つけたがる習性が人間にはあるということ。(39字)
問3 子どもにつける名前が非常に重要であるというのが我々の考えであるが，もし子どもにボブと名付けるにしても，その子どもがある一連の性格的特徴を最終的に持つようになる可能性は，別の一連の性格的特徴を持つようになる可能性と同じように低い。
問4 prejudices
問5 not to the extent it does in Mandarin
問6 this made it hard to form any meaningful associations
問7 履歴書や科学論文などの重要な書類を審査する時は執筆者の名前を隠すべきだという考え。(40字)
問8 多くの言語において単語の音と意味の間には形や大きさの点で関連性があるため，音から知らない単語の意味を推測することができる。(60字)
問9 自分が話している言語の単語のパターンから大きく逸脱している造語だと，形を想像するまでその単語の音を覚えていられないから。(60字)
問10 (A) but (C) at (E) from (F) of
問11 (B) ⑤originate (G) ③bring (J) ⑥vary
問12 二 (unfamiliar / unfamiliar / familiar)
問13 ロ・二
【設問】
次の英文を読んで，以下の問いに答えなさい。
Picture two cartoon characters, one round and the other spiky. Which would you name Bouba, and which one Kiki? And which do you then think is more outgoing? Perhaps surprisingly, most of you will probably attribute the same name and characteristics to each of the shapes. A growing body of research suggests that people tend to make a range of judgments based on nothing ( A ) the sound of a word or name.
At its most basic, this is known as the bouba-kiki effect, or maluma-takete effect, because of how our minds link certain sounds and shapes. (1)Across many different languages, people tend to associate the sounds “b”, “m”, “l”, and “o” (as in the made-up words bouba and maluma) with round shapes. The sounds “k”, “t”, “p”, and “i”, as in the nonsense words kiki and takete, are commonly seen as spiky. These associations may be partly rooted in the physical experience of saying and hearing sounds, with some feeling more effortful and rough than others.
Surprisingly, the bouba-kiki effect even extends into human relationships, and how we imagine the personalities of people we’ve never met. Cognitive psychologist* David Sidhu at University College London and psycholinguist* Penny Pexman at the University of Calgary have found that people perceive certain personal names such as Bob and Molly as round, and others such as Kirk and Kate as spiky. In French, they showed the same effect with the “round” Benoit versus the “spiky” Eric. In a separate study, participants pictured people with those names as having rounded or spiky personalities. “The basic thing we find is that if you compare these very smooth, soft-sounding names, like Molly, to these harsher-sounding names like Kate, that the smoother-sounding names like Molly get associated with things like being more agreeable, more emotional, more responsible, whereas the harsher, spikier-sounding names are thought of as being more extroverted*,” says Sidhu.
These widespread associations may ( B ) in how these sounds feel in our mouth, according to Sidhu. “If you think about pronouncing an ‘m’ versus a ‘t’, for example, that ‘m’-sound feels much smoother, and that symbolically captures the smoothness of the rounded shape versus the spiky shape.” Sounds like “t” and “k” may feel more energetic, capturing an extroverted, cheerful, lively quality.
And this mouth-feel of the words we use can influence how we experience the world, ( C ) any given moment we use a series of subtle cues to pull together information from all our senses, and make judgments and predictions about our environment. “There’s something about how (2)humans are fundamentally associative,” Pexman says. “We want to see patterns in things, we want to find connections between things, and we’ll find them even between sounds, and the things those sounds stand for in the world.”
Such associations can help us with important real-life tasks, such as language-learning and guessing the meaning of ( D ) words. In English, words for round things are often round-sounding, as in blob, balloon, ball, marble. Words like prickly, spiny, sting, and perky are spiky both in sound and meaning. Sounds can also indicate size. An “i”-sound is linked to smallness, while an “o”-sound indicates largeness. Some of these links exist across thousands of languages, with the “i”-sound excessively popping up in words for “small” around the world.
For people learning new words, whether babies, young children, or adults, these patterns can be very helpful. Young children and even babies already match round sounds with round shapes. Parents tend to use sound-shape associations to emphasise the meaning of certain words, such as “teeny tiny.” Adults benefit ( E ) associations when they learn a new language, finding it easier to guess or remember foreign words when their sound matches their meaning.
Some argue that these instinctive connections between sounds and meaning may even be a leftover from humanity’s earliest stages of language evolution, and that human language itself started as a string of such expressive, readily guessable sounds.
When it comes to people’s personalities, however, sound is not a reliable guide at all. Sidhu, Pexman, and their collaborators tested whether there was a link between a person’s name and their personality, perhaps because the round or spiky sound of the name became attached to the wearer. They found no such association. “People worry about baby names. It’s this expectation that the label matters so much,” Pexman says. “Our data would suggest that (3)although that’s what we think, if you call the kid Bob, they’re not any more likely to end up with one set of personality characteristics than another.”
Instead, our reaction to a name probably reveals more about our own prejudices. “It does suggest that we’re prepared to read a lot into somebody’s name that probably isn’t a cue to what that person is actually like,” says Pexman.
Results from an ongoing study by Sidhu, Pexman, and collaborators suggest that the sound of a name has less ( F ) an impact as we find out more about people. When participants were shown videos of people with supposedly round or spiky names, the names made no difference to their judgment of them. “When all you know is the name, like in these studies when you’re just shown a name and asked about the personality, then maybe these sounds will play a role,” Sidhu says. “But as you start getting more information about the person, then that actual information about the personality is probably going to cancel these (4)biases.”
The research adds to a growing body of evidence that challenges a long-held view in linguistics: that sounds are arbitrary*, and have no inherent* meaning. Instead, certain sounds have been found to ( G ) to mind consistent associations not just with shapes and sizes, but even with flavours and textures. Milk chocolate, brie cheese,* and still water tend to be perceived as bouba / maluma, while crisps, bitter chocolate, mint chocolate, and sparkling water are more likely to be experienced as kiki / takete.
As widespread as the bouba-kiki effect is, it can be changed or cancelled out by different factors, such as our own native sound system. Suzy Styles and her PhD* student Nan Shang tested the bouba-kiki effect with Mandarin Chinese*. Mandarin is a tonal language*, where the meaning of a word can completely change depending on the tone* in which it is said. In English, tone can carry some meaning, for example by signalling a question, but (5)[ does / extent / in / it / Mandarin / not / the / to ]. The researchers presented English- and Mandarin-speakers with two Mandarin Chinese tones, one high and one falling. The English-speaking participants in the experiment perceived the high tone as spiky, and the falling one as rounded. But Mandarin speakers drew the opposite conclusion, picturing the high tone as rounded, and the falling tone as spiky.
One possible explanation is that if we are ( H ) with tones in a language, as English-speakers are, then we may mainly hear them as high or low, and form associations based on pitch*. But if we are ( I ) with tones, as Chinese speakers are, we may be able to distinguish finer nuances. In the experiment, the Mandarin speakers heard the high tone as smooth, drawn-out, and steady, and therefore, rounded. The falling tone was experienced as sudden, because it dropped quickly, making it spiky.
Other studies also found variations in the bouba-kiki pattern. The Himba, a remote community in Northern Namibia who speak the Otjiherero language, judged bouba to be round and kiki to be spiky, in line with the general trend. But they found milk chocolate to be spiky-tasting, suggesting that our associations with regard to our senses are not universal.
When Styles and linguist Lauren Gawne tested the bouba-kiki effect on speakers of Syuba, a language in the Himalayas in Nepal, they found no consistent response either way. The Syuba speakers seemed confused by the made-up words, possibly because they did not sound like any actual Syuba words. (6)[ any / associations / form / hard / it / made / meaningful / this / to ]. An analogy would be to say the made-up word “ngf” to an English speaker, and ask if it is round or spiky. It would probably be difficult to make a meaningful choice. “When we hear words that don’t follow the word-pattern of our native language, it’s often hard to do things with that word,” Styles says. “We can’t hold it in our short-term memory long enough to make decisions about it.”
Cultural factors are also likely to affect our reactions to the sound of personal names. In English, the sounds “k” and “oo” are perceived as inherently humorous. English female names are more likely to contain sounds that are perceived as small, such as the “i”-sound in Emily, and also feature more soft sounds than male names. But in other languages, names can follow a completely different sound pattern. Sidhu hasn’t yet tested the name-personality association across different languages, but expects that it would ( J ).
Uncovering these hidden associations holds one important real-life lesson: we probably read too much into other people’s names. After all, Sidhu and Pexman found no evidence that Bobs are actually friendlier, or Kirks more extroverted. Their findings may add weight to calls to remove names from important documents such as CVs* or scientific papers under review, to prevent unconscious bias. Sidhu supports (7)the idea. “I think that makes a lot of sense,” he says. “Whenever someone is being judged, taking away all of these extra things that could bias the judgment is always a good idea.” (1590 words)
(語注)
cognitive psychologist 認知心理学者 psycholinguist 心理言語学者
extroverted 外向的な arbitrary 恣意的な
inherent 本来備わっている
brie cheese ブリーチーズ(フランス産チーズの一種) PhD 博士課程の
Mandarin Chinese 標準中国語(Mandarin) tonal language 声調言語
tone 声調(音の高低) pitch 声の高さ
CV 履歴書
問1 下線部(1)のような傾向はなぜ生じると考えられるか。M音の場合を例にして，本文の内容に即して50字以内の日本語で説明しなさい。
問2 下線部(2)の表す意味を40字以内の日本語で具体的に説明しなさい。
問3 下線部(3)をthatの指し示す内容を明らかにしながら和訳しなさい。
問4 下線部(4)と同じ意味で使われている英語1語を本文からそのまま抜き出しなさい。ただし抜き出すべき語はbias以外とする。
問5 空欄(5)の語を正しく並べ替えなさい。
問6 空欄(6)の語を正しく並べ替えなさい。
問7 下線部(7)the ideaの指し示す内容を，40字以内の日本語で説明しなさい。
問8 外国語学習における the bouba-kiki effectの利点を，本文の内容に即して60字以内の日本語で説明しなさい。
問9 The bouba-kiki effectは架空の語に関しては生じない可能性がある。その理由を本文の内容に即して60字以内の日本語で説明しなさい。
問10 空欄( A )，( C )，( E )，( F )に入れるのに最も適切な前置詞1語をそれぞれ書きなさい。
問11 空欄( B )，( G )，( J )に入れる語として最も適切なものを，下の選択肢からそれぞれ選びなさい。
① account ② attribute ③ bring ④ develop
⑤ originate ⑥ vary
問12 空欄( D )，( H )，( I )に入れる語の組み合わせとして最も適切なものを選択肢から選びなさい。
① (D) familiar (H) familiar (I) unfamiliar
② (D) familiar (H) unfamiliar (I) familiar
③ (D) unfamiliar (H) familiar (I) unfamiliar
④ (D) unfamiliar (H) unfamiliar (I) familiar
問13 第3段落(Surprisinglyで始まる段落)で述べられている内容を選択肢から２つ選びなさい。
① the bouba-kiki effectは，すでに顔見知りの人に対してのみ表れる。
② フランス語ではBenoitが丸く，Ericはとがった感じに聞こえる。
③ 丸みを感じる名前は社交的であると感じられ，きつい感じの名前は感情的な性質を思わせる。
④ MollyやBobといった名前は丸さ，KirkやKateはとがった感じをそれぞれ人に思わせ，そうした人格を想定させる。
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