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An investigation of iconic language development in four datasets.

Iconic words imitate their meanings. Previous work has demonstrated that iconic words are more common in infants' early speech, and in adults' child-directed speech (e.g., Perry et al., 2015; 2018). This is consistent with the proposal that iconicity provides a benefit to word learning. Here we expl...

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Published in:Journal of Child Language Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 382 - 397
Main Authors: SIDHU, David M., WILLIAMSON, Jennifer, SLAVOVA, Velina, PEXMAN, Penny M.
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Cambridge University Press Mar2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2022
      vid: 49
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      pub: Cambridge University Press
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        155236046
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        10.1017/S0305000921000040
        155236046
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        atl: An investigation of iconic language development in four datasets.
      aug:
        au:
          SIDHU, David M.
          WILLIAMSON, Jennifer
          SLAVOVA, Velina
          PEXMAN, Penny M.
        affil: University of Calgary, Canada
      sug:
        subj:
          Language Development Evaluation
          Human
          Child, Preschool
          Vocabulary
          Data Analysis Software
          Clinical Assessment Tools
          Funding Source
          Child, Preschool: 2-5 years
      ab: Iconic words imitate their meanings. Previous work has demonstrated that iconic words are more common in infants' early speech, and in adults' child-directed speech (e.g., Perry et al., 2015; 2018). This is consistent with the proposal that iconicity provides a benefit to word learning. Here we explored iconicity in four diverse language development datasets: a production corpus for infants and preschoolers (MacWhinney, 2000), comprehension data for school-aged children to young adults (Dale & O'Rourke, 1981), word frequency norms from educational texts for school aged children to young adults (Zeno et al., 1995), and a database of parent-reported infant word production (Frank et al., 2017). In all four analyses, we found that iconic words were more common at younger ages. We also explored how this relationship differed by syntactic class, finding only modest evidence for differences. Overall, the results suggest that, beyond infancy, iconicity is an important factor in language acquisition.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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