Phonological Motivation for the Acquisition of Onomatopoeia: An Analysis of Early Words

Abstract

Onomatopoeia are disproportionately high in number in infants' early words compared to adult language. Studies of infant language perception have proposed an iconic advantage for onomatopoeia, which may make them easier for infants to learn (Imai & Kita, 2014;Laing, 2017). This study analyses infants' early word production to show a phonological motivation for onomatopoeia in early acquisition. Cross-linguistic evidence from 16 infants demonstrates how these forms fit within a phonologically-systematic developing lexicon. We observe a predominance of consonant harmony and open CV syllables in infants' early wordsstructures that are typical of onomatopoeia across languages. Infants' acquisition of onomatopoeia is shown to be driven by a preference for structures that are easy to plan and produce. These data present an original perspective on onomatopoeia in early development, highlighting the role of production in language acquisition in general, and onomatopoeic words in particular.

Naming pictures and sounds: Stimulus type affects semantic context effects.

“…Another issue to consider is the existence of alternative onomatopoeic verbal labels for some of the sounds (e.g., "bowwow", "moo"), frequently used in childdirected speech and thus acquired early in live. Given that age of acquisition is a powerful variable affecting lexical processing (see Laing, 2019, for a review), it could be that these alternative verbal labels, even though not used frequently in adult language, were strongly activated by sounds specifically and then acted as powerful competitors, causing the boost in interference. According to our intuition, there are 4 items (out of the 16 used in Experiments 1 and 2) for which such onomatopoeic verbal labels are often used in child language (dog: "bowwow"; cow: "moo"; pig: "oink", motorcycle: "vroom").…”

The Iconicity Ring Hypothesis Bridges the Gap Between Symbol Grounding and Linguistic Relativity

“…As young infants acquire language within culture, they are likely to first embody words whose iconicity is universally perceivable because the sound‐meaning correspondences of these words are easy for them to recognize, and adult speakers adjust their input as well (Laing, 2019); but they gradually deviate from such primary iconicity and acquire the abstract language system possessed by adults. Through this process, they develop secondary iconicity and embody language‐specific systems.…”

Sign learning of hearing children in inclusive day care centers—does iconicity matter?

“…In spoken languages, iconicity includes onomatopoeia, i.e., words representing sounds of animals, vehicles, or other objects, as well as sound symbolism, i.e., phonemes or words that match properties of their referents such as their shape or movement ( Ota et al, 2018 ). Onomatopoeic words are more prevalent in the vocabulary of young children as well as in child-directed speech and are discussed to facilitate vocabulary acquisition ( Ota et al, 2018 ; Laing, 2019 ; Motamedi et al, 2021 ). Accordingly, sound symbolism is already perceived and exploited by babies ( Peña et al, 2011 ; Ozturk et al, 2013 ) and continues to be involved in vocabulary learning by children of different ages ( Maurer et al, 2006 ; Imai et al, 2008 ; Massaro and Perlman, 2017 ; Tzeng et al, 2017 ).…”