Iconicity in the speech of children and adults

Abstract

Iconicity - the correspondence between form and meaning - may help young children learn to use new words. Early-learned words are higher in iconicity than later learned words. However, it remains unclear what role iconicity may play in actual language use. Here, we ask whether iconicity relates not just to the age at which words are acquired, but also to how frequently children and adults use the words in their speech. If iconicity serves to bootstrap word learning, then we would expect that children should say highly iconic words more frequently than less iconic words, especially early in development. We would also expect adults to use iconic words more often when speaking to children than to other adults. We examined the relationship between frequency and iconicity for approximately 2000 English words. Replicating previous findings, we found that more iconic words are learned earlier. Moreover, we found that more iconic words tend to be used more by younger children, and adults use more iconic words when speaking to children than to other adults. Together, our results show that young children not only learn words rated high in iconicity earlier than words low in iconicity, but they also produce these words more frequently in conversation - a pattern that is reciprocated by adults when speaking with children. Thus, the earliest conversations of children are relatively higher in iconicity, suggesting that this iconicity scaffolds the production and comprehension of spoken language during early development.

Why Choo‐Choo Is Better Than Train: The Role of Register‐Specific Words in Early Vocabulary Growth

“…This tendency toward iconicity in IDS applies more generally to other words addressed to infants in both spoken and signed languages. For example, words used in English IDS, including those that are not specifically onomatopoeic, receive higher overall iconicity ratings than those in ADS (Perlman, Fusaroli, Fein, & Naigles, 2017;Perry, Perlman, Winter, Massaro, & Lupyan, 2017). In British Sign Language, signs with transparent iconicity are further modified in infant-directed language in a way that highlights the nonarbitrary gesture-meaning mapping (Perniss, Lu, Morgan, & Vigliocco, 2017).…”

“…These effects are also found in naturalistic vocabulary development. Early‐acquired words tend to be more iconic than later‐acquired words both in spoken languages (Massaro & Perlman, ; Perlman et al., ; Perry, Perlman, & Lupyan, ; Perry et al., ) and sign languages (Caselli & Pyers, ; Thompson, Vinson, Woll, & Vigliocco, ).…”

Symbouki: a meta‐analysis on the emergence of sound symbolism in early language acquisition

“…Moreover, both adults and children memorize more easily novel soundmeaning mappings when the pseudowords are sound symbolic compared to when they are not, suggesting that sound symbolism facilitates word learning processes Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, 2008;Kantarzis, Imai, & Kita, 2011;Monaghan et al, 2012). Similarly, more recent findings demonstrate that compared to adults, young children hear and tend to produce sound symbolic words more frequently than non-symbolic words in their spontaneous speech (Perry, Perlman, Winter, Massaro, & Lupyan, 2017). However, whether the sensitivity to sound symbolic relationships in language is present in their earliest stages of life (Ozturk, Krehm, & Vouloumanos, 2013;Peña, Mehler, & Nespor, 2011;Spector & Maurer, 2009;Walker et al, 2010Walker et al, , 2014 or emerges as a consequence of exposure to cross-modal statistical regularities in the environment (Fernández-Prieto, Navarra, & Pons, 2015; Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009;Lewkowicz & Minar, 2014) remains a matter of debate.…”

What Does a Horgous Look Like? Nonsense Words Elicit Meaningful Drawings

“…In combination with other recent work (e.g., Auracher, 2017;Perlman et al, 2015;Perry et al, 2018;Westbury et al, 2018), we hope that the present investigation helps to move us beyond the simple question of whether people make use of non-arbitrary relationships in spoken language (they do!) and toward understanding why natural languages are not even more iconic Monaghan et al, 2014) and precisely where the form-meaning associations used by our participants came from.…”

“…Although these investigations of sound symbolism have not settled the question of where these associations between forms and meanings come from (but see Imai & Kita, ; Sidhu & Pexman, ; Spence, ), they have further demonstrated the varied way in which iconicity plays a role in language learning and vocal communication. For example, Perry, Perlman, Winter, Massaro, & Lupyan, () showed that more iconic words are learned earlier by children (adjusting for numerous potential confounds like frequency, concreteness, and communicative need; see also, e.g., Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, ; Maurer et al, ; Peña, Mehler, & Nespor, ; for further review, see Imai & Kita, ). Such apparent advantages of iconicity go beyond word‐learning.…”