A role for onomatopoeia in early language: evidence from phonological development

Abstract

Onomatopoeia appear in high quantities in many infants’ earliest words, yet there is minimal research in this area. Instead, findings from the wider iconicity literature are generalised to include onomatopoeia, leading to the assumption that their iconic status makes them inherently learnable, thereby prompting their early production. In this review we bring together the literature on onomatopoeia specifically and iconicity more generally to consider infants’ acquisition from three perspectives: perception, production, and interaction. We consider these findings in relation to Imai and Kita’s (2014) ‘sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis’ to determine whether their framework can account for onomatopoeia alongside other iconic forms.

A data-driven approach to the semantics of iconicity in American Sign Language and English

“…We also found support for the widely assumed premise that signed languages afford, if not more iconicity per se, more systematic, readily detectable patterns of iconicity across their vocabulary than spoken languages. In addition to the factors examined here, the level of iconicity may also be influenced by its role in learning processes, helping both children and adults to learn new signs and words (Imai & Kita, 2014; Laing, 2019; Ortega, 2017; Perniss & Vigliocco, 2014; Perry, Perlman, Winter, Massaro, & Lupyan, 2018). For example, the early vocabularies of children show a preponderance of iconic items, a pattern found in English and Spanish (Perry et al, 2015) as well as in British Sign Language (R. Thompson, Vinson, Woll, & Vigliocco, 2012) and ASL (Caselli & Pyers, 2017).…”

“…Here, we examine two of these factors: the discriminability of signs and words, and the degree to which they afford iconicity, i.e., the extent to which a linguistic form can resemble its referent. A third factor, not directly examined in this paper, is the role of iconicity in the learnability of new signs and words (Imai & Kita, 2014;Laing, 2019;Perniss & Vigliocco, 2014;Perry et al, 2015).…”

Reconceptualising early language development: matter, sensation and the more-than-human

“…A great deal of humming, non-linguistic sounding, rhythmic gesture, onomatopoeia and idiosyncratic movement accompanies, or rather, is folded into, young children's language (Laing, 2019;MacLure, 2016). This is of particular significance for the relational-material model of early language that we are developing here, since such practices operate at the boundary of language, sensation and materiality.…”

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

“…There is ample evidence that iconicity facilitates the learning of iconic words and their meanings (P4 and P5): onomatopoeia are among the earliest learned words ( Laing, 2019 ), iconically congruent form–meaning pairs are easier to learn or to retain for young toddlers ( Kantartzis et al, 2019 ; Miyazaki et al, 2013 ), and sound-symbolic forms for manner-of-motion meanings are more easily generalized to novel instances than arbitrary forms for children as well as adults ( Imai et al, 2008 ; Kantartzis et al, 2011 ; Yoshida, 2012 ). On the other hand, the premise that iconic form–meaning mappings can help early learners to discover that speech sounds can have a referential function (P3) seems to have less direct empirical support.…”

“…Onomatopoeia are universally available in spoken languages, which increases the prospects that any advantages they offer in early communicative development are of universal relevance. Indeed Laing (2019) notes that several features of onomatopoeia—including salient forms, consonant harmony, open syllables and reduplication—have clear learning and production advantages.…”