The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisi...

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Vydáno v:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Ročník 369; číslo 1651; s. 20130298
Hlavní autoři: Imai, Mutsumi, Kita, Sotaro
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: England 19.09.2014
Témata:
Association Learning - physiology
Child
Child, Preschool
Cultural Evolution
Humans
Infant
Language Development
Models, Psychological
Nonverbal Communication - psychology
Sound
Speech Perception - physiology
Symbolism
language evolution
sound symbolism
lexical development
iconic gesture
language acquisition
ISSN:1471-2970, 1471-2970
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Shrnutí:Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture.
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ISSN:1471-2970
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2013.0298