Iconicity in vocalization, comparisons with gesture, and implications for theories on the evolution of language

Abstract

Scholars have often reasoned that vocalizations are extremely limited in their potential for iconic expression, especially in comparison to manual gestures (e.g., Armstrong & Wilcox, 2007;Tomasello, 2008). As evidence for an alternative view, we first review the growing body of research related to iconicity in vocalizations, including experimental work on sound symbolism, cross-linguistic studies documenting iconicity in the grammars and lexicons of languages, and experimental studies that examine iconicity in the production of speech and vocalizations. We then report an experiment in which participants created vocalizations to communicate 60 different meanings, including 30 antonymic pairs. The vocalizations were measured along several acoustic properties, and these properties were compared between antonyms. Participants were highly consistent in the kinds of sounds they produced for the majority of meanings, supporting the hypothesis that vocalization has considerable potential for iconicity. In light of these findings, we present a comparison between vocalization and manual gesture, and examine the detailed ways in which each modality can function in the iconic expression of particular kinds of meanings. We further discuss the role of iconic vocalizations and gesture in the evolution of language since our divergence from the great apes. In conclusion, we suggest that human communication is best understood as an ensemble of kinesis and vocalization, not just speech, in which expression in both modalities spans the range from arbitrary to iconic.

Iconicity in the speech of children and adults

“…That the earliest conversations of children are distinctly iconic suggests that iconicity scaffolds the production and comprehension of spoken language during early development. More generally, these findings support the emerging theory that many of the words of spoken languages are iconic in functionally significant ways, spanning language development, evolution, and online processing (Clark, 2016;Dingemanse, Blasi, Lupyan, Christiansen, & Monaghan, 2015;Imai & Kita, 2014;Lockwood & Dingemanse, 2015;Lockwood, Hagoort, & Dingemanse, 2016;Perlman & Cain, 2014;Perniss & Vigliocco, 2014). Far from being a fluke of isolated segments of the English lexicon, iconicity is systematically distributed across the early lexicon, and it appears to play an important role in early communication.…”

Quantifying Iconicity’s Contribution during Language Acquisition: Implications for Vocabulary Learning

“…These results contribute to an accumulating collection of studies revealing a significant role of iconicity in language acquisition and in language more broadly, including spoken and signed languages (Nuckolls, 1999;Taub, 2001;Imai and Kita, 2014;Perlman and Cain, 2014;Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014;Dingemanse et al, 2015;Perlman et al, 2015;Perry et al, 2015). In particular, this study provides a detailed quantification of how the iconicity of learned words varies across vocabulary development, and the only one to date including both receptive understanding and production.…”

What the hands can tell us about language emergence

“…Note that the alternative arrangement—in which the manual modality assumes the segmented code and the oral modality serves the mimetic functions—also allows for the simultaneous production of the two formats, but it has the disadvantage of forcing the oral modality to be unnaturally imagistic in form (although see Dingemanse, 2012; Dingemanse et al, 2015; Haiman, 1985; Hinton et al, 1994; Nuckolls, 1999; Perlman & Cain, 2014, Shintel et al, 2006, for evidence that the oral modality does exhibit some iconic properties). If the argument is correct, speech became the predominant medium of human language not because it is so well suited to the segmented and combinatorial requirements of symbolic communication (the manual modality is equally suited to the job), but rather because it is not particularly good at capturing the mimetic components of human communication (a task at which the manual modality excels).…”

“…This weakness is relative. There is increasing evidence that the oral modality can convey some information mimetically (Dingemanse, 2012; Dingemanse, Blasi, Lupyan, Christiansen & Monaghan, 2015; Haiman, 1985; Hinton, Nichols & Ohala, 1994; Nuckolls, 1999; Perlman & Cain, 2014, Shintel, Nusbaum & Okrent, 2006). But unlike the manual modality where it’s easy to find transparency between form and meaning, we have to search for this type of transparency in the oral modality.…”