Evolutionary roots of sound symbolism. Association tasks of animal properties with phonetic features

Carolis, Léa De; Marsico, Egidio; Coupé, Christophe

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2016.10.003

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Despite the empirical prudence of Imai and Kita’s account, which focuses mainly on how iconicity can make iconic words easier to learn, studies citing and summarizing it often extend its claims to the subsequent “learning of non-iconic words” ( Massaro & Perlman, 2017 , p. 10), to “infant’s word learning” in general ( De Carolis et al, 2017 ), or even more broadly to “language learning” ( Perry et al, 2017 ; Sidhu & Pexman, 2017 ). It is clear from this that for many scholars, iconic bootstrapping extends far beyond the learning of iconic words.…”

Section: Iconicity and Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

Nielsen

Dingemanse²

2020

Lang Speech

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Interest in iconicity (the resemblance-based mapping between aspects of form and meaning ) is in the midst of a resurgence, and a prominent focus in the field has been the possible role of iconicity in language learning. Here we critically review theory and empirical findings in this domain. We distinguish local learning enhancement (where the iconicity of certain lexical items influences the learning of those items) and general learning enhancement (where the iconicity of certain lexical items influences the later learning of non-iconic items or systems). We find that evidence for local learning enhancement is quite strong, though not as clear cut as it is often described and based on a limited sample of languages. Despite common claims about broader facilitatory effects of iconicity on learning, we find that current evidence for general learning enhancement is lacking. We suggest a number of productive avenues for future research and specify what types of evidence would be required to show a role for iconicity in general learning enhancement. We also review evidence for functions of iconicity beyond word learning: iconicity enhances comprehension by providing complementary representations, supports communication about sensory imagery, and expresses affective meanings. Even if learning benefits may be modest or cross-linguistically varied, on balance, iconicity emerges as a vital aspect of language.

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Section: Iconicity and Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

Nielsen

Dingemanse²

2020

Lang Speech

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show abstract

“…Despite the empirical prudence of Imai and Kita's account, which focuses mainly on how iconicity can make iconic words easier to learn, studies citing and summarizing it often extend its claims to the subsequent "learning of non-iconic words" (Massaro & Perlman, 2017, p. 10), to "infant's word learning" in general (De Carolis et al, 2017), or even more broadly to "language learning" (Perry et al, 2017;Sidhu & Pexman, 2017). It is clear from this that for many scholars, iconic bootstrapping extends far beyond the learning of iconic words.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Iconicity in word learning and beyond: A critical review

Nielsen¹,

Dingemanse²

2018

Preprint

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Interest in iconicity (the resemblance-based mapping between aspects of form and meaning) is in the midst of a resurgence, and a prominent focus in the field has been the possible role of iconicity in language learning. Here we critically review theory and empirical findings in this domain. We distinguish local learning enhancement (where the iconicity of certain lexical items influences the learning of those items) and general learning enhancement (where the iconicity of certain lexical items influences the later learning of non-iconic items or systems). We find that evidence for local learning enhancement is quite strong, though not as clear cut as it is often described and based on a limited sample of languages. Despite common claims about broader facilitatory effects of iconicity on learning, we find that current evidence for general learning enhancement is lacking. We suggest a number of productive avenues for future research and specify what types of evidence would be required to show a role for iconicity in general learning enhancement. We also review evidence for functions of iconicity beyond word learning: iconicity enhances comprehension by providing complementary representations, supports communication about sensory imagery, and expresses affective meanings. Even if learning benefits may be modest or cross-linguistically varied, on balance, iconicity emerges as a vital aspect of language.

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“…For example, the /ŋ/ in the English onomatopoeia /diŋ.dɔŋ/ seems to be characteristic of the reverberating echo of a bell tolling, while the alternating /i/ and /ɔ/ seems characteristic of movement or a fluctuation in pitch as the bell tolls. While various studies have worked to elicit submorphemic sound-to-meaning phoneme correspondences (McCune 1983;Maduka 1988;Oswalt 1994;Rhodes 1994;Hamano 1998;in press;Hutchins 1998;Blust 2003;Ofori 2009;Assaneo et al 2011;Urban 2011;Akita et al 2013;Ayalew 2013;Kwon & Round 2015;Blasi et al 2016;Akita 2017;De Carolis et al 2017;Strickland et al 2017; Aryani 2018;Kawahara et al 2018;Shih et al 2018), the underlying mechanisms which allow for such correspondences in spoken language remain unclear (cf. Emmorey 2014 for signed language; cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining iconicity: An articulation-based methodology for explaining the phonological structure of ideophones

Thompson

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Iconicity is when linguistic units are perceived as 'sounding like what they mean,' so that phonological structure of an iconic word is what begets its meaning through perceived imitation, rather than an arbitrary semantic link. Fundamental examples are onomatopoeia, e.g., dog's barking: woof woof (English), wou wou (Cantonese), wan wan (Japanese), hau hau (Polish). Systematicity is often conflated with iconicity because it is also a phenomenon whereby a word begets its meaning from phonological structure, albeit through (arbitrary) statistical relationships, as opposed to perceived imitation. One example is gl-(Germanic languages), where speakers can intuit the meaning 'light' via knowledge of similar words, e.g., glisten, glint, glow, gleam, glimmer. This conflation of iconicity and systematicity arises from questions like 'How can we differentiate or qualify perceived imitation from (arbitrary) statistical relationships?' So far there is no proposal to answer this question. By drawing observations from the visual modality, this paper mediates ambiguity between iconicity and systematicity in spoken language by proposing a methodology which explains how iconicity is achieved through perceptuo-motor analogies derived from oral articulatory gesture. We propose that universal accessibility of articulatory gestures, and human ability to create (perceptuo-motor) analogy, is what in turn makes iconicity universal and thus easily learnable by speakers regardless of language background, as studies have shown. Conversely, our methodology allows one to argue which words are devoid of iconicity seeing as such words should not be explainable in terms of articulatory gesture. We use ideophones from Chaoyang (Southern Min) to illustrate our methodology.

show abstract

Evolutionary roots of sound symbolism. Association tasks of animal properties with phonetic features

Cited by 8 publications

References 61 publications

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

Iconicity in word learning and beyond: A critical review

Defining iconicity: An articulation-based methodology for explaining the phonological structure of ideophones

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