Young children spontaneously recreate core properties of language in a new modality

Abstract

How the world’s 6,000+ natural languages have arisen is mostly unknown. Yet, new sign languages have emerged recently among deaf people brought together in a community, offering insights into the dynamics of language evolution. However, documenting the emergence of these languages has mostly consisted of studying the end product; the process by which ad hoc signs are transformed into a structured communication system has not been directly observed. Here we show how young children create new communication systems that exhibit core features of natural languages in less than 30 min. In a controlled setting, we blocked the possibility of using spoken language. In order to communicate novel messages, including abstract concepts, dyads of children spontaneously created novel gestural signs. Over usage, these signs became increasingly arbitrary and conventionalized. When confronted with the need to communicate more complex meanings, children began to grammatically structure their gestures. Together with previous work, these results suggest that children have the basic skills necessary, not only to acquire a natural language, but also to spontaneously create a new one. The speed with which children create these structured systems has profound implications for theorizing about language evolution, a process which is generally thought to span across many generations, if not millennia.

Gesture Production and Theory of Mind: Effective Disambiguation in Communication through Gesture

“…These findings are in line with the idea that gesture can quickly transform to reflect the systematic features of spoken language: Children intuitively and rapidly transform silent gestures into a conventional system, when the need arises (e.g. Nicaraguan sign language; Kegl et al, 1999;Senghas & Coppola, 2001; see also Bohn, Kachel, & Tomasello, 2019). Recent work has suggested that reference may be easier to establish in gesture than vocalization (Fay et al, 2014), prompting others to theorize that human conventional communication may have originated in gesture (Bohn, Call, & Tomasello, 2019).…”

“…When hearing people are restricted from using speech and are instructed to only use silent gestures, they can successfully describe events, and their gestures furthermore show some grammatical features of conventional language (e.g. Bohn, Kachel, & Tomasello, 2019;Fay et al, 2014;Goldin-Meadow et al, 1996;2008). For example, people asked to describe a series of events either only using gestures (vs. using speech, with no instruction regarding gestures) segmented and hierarchically combined their gestures, as in the grammar of conventional language.…”

“…This leads to the prediction that even children would succeed, since children can modify their speech to take into account the listener's perspective (Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Wardlow & Heyman, 2016). However, there are still limitations to children's abilities even at school-age (Girbau, 2001;Sonnenschein & Whitehurst, 1984;, and at preschool age, children show a reduced tendency to spontaneously use gesture in a communicative way, requiring prompting from an adult (Bohn, Kachel, & Tomasello, 2019), leading to the prediction that children may fail. Thus, the current paper aims to provide a measure of adult performance, to allow for future comparison and exploration of the development of use of theory of mind in gestural communication.…”

“…Recent data also suggests that at preschool age, children show a reduced tendency to spontaneously use gesture in a communicative way, requiring prompting from an adult (Bohn, Kachel, & Tomasello, 2019). In future work, we plan to compare children's ability to tailor their gestures for their listeners' needs with their abilities to do this via spoken language.…”

Crossing the Rubicon: Behaviorism, Language, and Evolutionary Continuity

“…In 6-to 8-year old children, the gestures also showed evidence of grammatical structure. Gesture, then, seems as "natural" as speech (Bohn et al, 2019).…”