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A set of experiments is described in which native children in the Mahali peninsula, Lake Tanganyika, were asked to match nonsense names with abstract drawings. The African children allotted names to drawings in a highly consistent manner and their choices were similar to those of a control group of English school children. It is argued that the results support the theory that purely structural similarities between sounds and shapes can be appreciated and used in naming.
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R. Davis (1961) studied this question.
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