Gesture is the primary modality for language creation

Abstract

How language began is one of the oldest questions in science, but theories remain speculative due to a lack of direct evidence. Here, we report two experiments that generate empirical evidence to inform gesture-first and vocal-first theories of language origin; in each, we tested modern humans' ability to communicate a range of meanings (995 distinct words) using either gesture or non-linguistic vocalization. Experiment 1 is a cross-cultural study, with signal Producers sampled from Australia ( n = 30, M age = 32.63, s.d. = 12.42) and Vanuatu ( n = 30, M age = 32.40, s.d. = 11.76). Experiment 2 is a cross-experiential study in which Producers were either sighted ( n = 10, M age = 39.60, s.d. = 11.18) or severely vision-impaired ( n = 10, M age = 39.40, s.d. = 10.37). A group of undergraduate student Interpreters guessed the meaning of the signals created by the Producers ( n = 140). Communication success was substantially higher in the gesture modality than the vocal modality (twice as high overall; 61.17% versus 29.04% success). This was true within cultures, across cultures and even for the signals produced by severely vision-impaired participants. The success of gesture is attributed in part to its greater universality (i.e. similarity in form across different Producers). Our results support the hypothesis that gesture is the primary modality for language creation.

Post-modernization Paradigm on the Modern Cultural Communication Research: A Literature Review

“…In the current modern era, cultural and language differences can be resolved by communicating usingh body language or gestures which are the primary modality for language creation (Fay et al, 2022). Nicolas Fay states that the universality of gestures is appropriate for bootstrapping communication between modern humans.…”

Communication Games: Social Interaction in the Formation of Novel Communication Systems

“…It is important to design signaling spaces in line with task demands, and make sure the space is sufficiently expressive. A few studies have specifically investigated the effect of signaling modality by comparing the use of vocalizations against gestures (or both) within the same experiment (Fay et al, 2013(Fay et al, , 2022Lister et al, 2021;Macuch Silva et al, 2020). Results from such studies typically show that communicative success is higher for gestures compared to vocalizations, often thanks to the high degree of iconicity in the manual modality.…”

Virtual Reality: A tool to study language evolution

“…The debate over the original modality of human language emergence, whether speech-first (Dunbar, 1996;MacNeilage, 2008) or gesture-first (Corballis, 2003;Tomasello, 2008;Arbib, 2012;Levinson, 2023), has given way to the understanding that language is inherently multimodal (Levinson & Holler, 2014;Kendon, 2017;Holler & Levinson, 2019). Laboratory experiments have demonstrated the capability of gestures and non-linguistic vocalisations to ground novel signals and communicate various referents (Fay et al, 2014(Fay et al, , 2022Perlman et al, 2015;Ćwiek et al, 2021). However, different modalities have their own strengths and weaknesses in conveying meanings.…”