Relationship between Physical Movements of the Body and Articulatory Movements in Children’s Games

This study examined the relationship between the trajectories of physical and articulatory movements in popular English and Japanese children’s games, based on the “articulatory dynamism” model proposed by the author. I selected the games of “peek-a-boo,” “inai inai baa” (a Japanese version of “peek-a-boo”), “ken ken pa” (a Japanese game similar to “hopscotch”), and “jan ken pon” (“rock-paper-scissors” in English). In “jan ken pon,” players make handshapes of “guu,” “choki,” and “paa,” which mean “rock,” “scissors,” and “paper,” respectively. They play these games by moving various parts of their bodies, simultaneously saying “peek-a-boo,” “inai inai baa,” “ken ken pa,” and “jan ken pon.” I focused on the player’s final movements which showed stretching and opening patterns with their hands or legs, and the final words of these games: “boo,” “baa,” “pa,” and “pon.” For this study, I compared the trajectories of the final parts of the physical movements and those of articulatory movements with respect to length and space. When the body movements showed a wide stretch or a long distance, the articulatory movements in pronouncing the words were long in the oral chamber. Humans tend to utter a word by making a long distance or space using their articulatory organs when they perceive a long distance in a body movement. As the final words mentioned above are the words consisting of a “bilabial” followed by a “central or back vowel,” the articulatory movement from bilabials to central or back vowels can unintentionally be selected to describe the stretch and open patterns of the physical movement. These findings suggest that the speakers’ perception of physical movement patterns may be linked to word production in children’s games. This study also examined the handshapes of “guu” and “paa,” which showed contrasting features, that is, “contraction” and “stretch-release.”