Biophysiological Explorations of Aesthetically Appealing Linguistic Patterns (BEALP)

The underlying rationale of this project is that the aesthetic appeal of linguistic features may influence how easily and effectively these features can be learned and transmitted to future generations of speakers. This, in turn, will influence how stable aesthetically appealing features are during long-term linguistic change (cf. Smith & Kirby, 2008).
In this project, I will test the so-far unexplored core premise of this proposal, namely whether everyday linguistic features inherently differ in their aesthetic appeal at all. To quantify the aesthetic appeal of everyday linguistic features objectively, I will combine participants’ ratings of aesthetic appeal with biophysiological measures such as heart rate measures, electrodermal activity, pupil dilation, or brain responses (e.g. Iqbal et al. 2021).