Sound symbolism facilitates early verb learning

Cognition

Volumn 109, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 54-65

  Imai, Mutsumi ^a   Kita, Sotaro ^b   Nagumo, Miho ^c   Okada, Hiroyuki ^d  

^a KEIO UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^c Department of Humanities and Social Sciences   (Japan)

^d Department of Engineering ^*  (Japan)

Author keywords

Iconicity in language; Scaffolding for early verb learning; Sound symbolism; Verb learning

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CHILD; CONTROLLED STUDY; FEMALE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; JAPANESE; LEARNING; MALE; NORMAL HUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE; SOUND; SPEECH; SYMBOLISM; TASK PERFORMANCE;

ADOLESCENT; CHILD; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; SEMANTICS; SOUND; SYMBOLISM; VERBAL LEARNING; VOCABULARY;

EID: 54349109514     PISSN: 00100277     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.07.015     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Alpher B. Yir-Yoront ideophones. In: Hinton L., Nichols J., and Ohala J.J. (Eds). Sound symbolism (1994), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 161-177
2. Atoda, T., & Hoshino, K. (1995). Giongo gitaigo tsukaikata jiten (Usage dictionary of sound/manner mimetics). Tokyo, Sotakusha.
3. Behrend D.A. Processes involved in the initial mapping of verb meanings. In: Tomasello M., and Merriman W.E. (Eds). Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (1995), Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale,NJ 251-273
4. Bloomfield L. Language (1984), University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Original Work published 1933)
5. Bolinger D. Rime, assonance, and morpheme analysis. Word 6 (1950) 117-136
6. Bodomo A. The structure of ideophones in African and Asian languages: The case of Dagaare and Cantonese. In: Mugane J. (Ed). Selected proceedings of the 35th annual conference on African linguistics (2006), Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA 203-213
7. Brown R.W., Black A.H., and Horowitz A.E. Phonetic symbolism in natural languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 50 (1955) 388-393
8. Cassasola M., and Cohen L.B. Infants' association of linguistic labels with causal actions. Developmental Psychology 36 (2000) 155-168
9. Childs G.T. African ideophones. In: Hinton L., Nichols J., and Ohara J.J. (Eds). Sound symbolism (1994), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 178-206
10. Childers J., and Tomasello M. Are nouns easier to learn than verbs? Three experimental studies. In: Hirsh-Pasek K., and Golinkoff R. (Eds). Action meets word: How children learn verbs (2006), Oxford University Press, New York 311-335
11. Choi S., and Gopnik A. Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Child Language 22 (1995) 497-529
12. Davis R. The fitness of names to drawings: A cross-cultural study in Tanganyika. British Journal of Psychology 52 (1961) 259-268
13. de Saussure F. Course in general linguistics (1983), Open Court, La Salle, IL (Original work published in 1916. Translated by R. Harris)
14. Diffloth G. Notes on expressive meaning. In: Peranteau P.M., Levi J.N., and Phares G.C. (Eds). Papers from the eighth regional meeting of Chicago linguistic society (1972), Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago 440-447
15. Diffloth G. Expressive phonology and prosaic phonology in Mon-Khmer. In: Thongkum T.L., Panupon V., Kullavanijaya P., and Kalaya M.R. (Eds). Studies in tai and mon-khmer phonetics and phonology: In honour of Eugenie j. A. Henderson (1979), Chulalongkorn University Press, Bankok 49-59
16. Emeneau M.B. Onomatopoetics in the Indian linguistic area. Language 45 2 (1969) 274-299
17. Enfield N.J. Areal linguistics and mainland southeast Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005) 181-206
18. Fernald A., and Morikawa H. Common themes and cultural variations in Japanese and American mothers' speech to infants. Child Development 64 (1993) 637-656
19. Firth J.R. The use and distribution of certain English sounds. In: Firth J.R. (Ed). Papers in linguistics 1934-1951 (1957), Oxford University Press, London 34-46 (Reprinted from Firth, J. R. (1935), English Studies, 17, 2-12)
20. Forbes J., and Farrar M. Learning to represent word meaning: What initial training events reveal about children's developing action verb concepts. Cognitive Development 10 (1995) 1-20
21. Forbes J., and Poulin-Dubois D. Representational change in young children's understanding of familiar verb meaning. Journal of Child Language 24 (1997) 389-406
22. Gentner D. Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In: Kuczaj S.A. (Ed). Language development: Language, thought, and culture Vol. 2 (1982), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 301-334
23. Gentner D., and Boroditsky L. Individuation, relativity and early word learning. In: Bowerman M., and Levinson S. (Eds). Language acquisition and conceptual development (2001), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 215-256
24. Gogate L.J., Bahrick L.E., and Watson J.D. A study of multimodal motherless: The role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures. Child Development 71 (2000) 878-894
25. Golinkoff R.M., Chung H.L., Hirsh-Pasek K., Liu J., Bertenthal B.I., Brand R., et al. Young children can extend motion verb labels to point-light displays. Developmental Psychology 38 (2002) 604-614
26. Golinkoff R., Jacquet R.C., Hirsh-Pasek K., and Nandakumar R. Lexical principles may underlie the learning of verbs. Child Development 67 (1996) 3101-3119
27. Hamano, S. (1986). The sound-symbolic system of Japanese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida.
28. Hamano S. The sound-symbolic system of Japanese (1998), CSLI & Kuroshio Publisher, Stanford, CA & Tokyo
29. In: Hinton L., Nichols J., and Ohala J. (Eds). Sound symbolism (1994), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
30. Huang Y.-H., Pratoomraj S., and Johnson R.C. Universal magnitude symbolism. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8 (1969) 155-156
31. Ibaretxe Antñano I. Sound symbolism and motion in Basque (2006), Lincom, München
32. Imai M., Haryu E., and Okada H. Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: Are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children?. Child Development 76 (2005) 340-355
33. Imai M., Haryu E., Okada H., Li L., and Shigematsu J. Revisiting the noun-verb debate: A cross-linguistic comparison of novel noun and verb learning in English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-speaking children. In: Hirsh-Pasek K., and Golinkoff R. (Eds). Action meets word: How children learn verbs (2006), Oxford University Press, New York 450-476
34. Imai M., Li L., Haryu E., Okada H., Hirsh-Pasek K., and Golinkoff R. Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children. Child Development 79 (2008) 979-1000
35. Iwasaki N., Vinson D.P., and Vigliocco G. What do English speakers know about gera-gera and yota-yota? A cross-linguistic investigation of mimetic words for laughing and walking. Japanese Education in the World 17 (2007) 53-78
36. Kersten A.W., and Smith L. Attention to novel objects during verb learning. Child Development 73 (2002) 93-109
37. Kita, S. (1993). Language and thought interface: A study of spontaneous gestures and Japanese mimetics. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago.
38. Kita S. Two-dimensional semantic analysis of Japanese mimetics. Linguistics 35 (1997) 379-415
39. Kita S. Semantic schism and interpretive integration in Japanese sentences with a mimetic: A reply to tsujimura. Linguistics 39 (2001) 419-436
40. Köhler W. Gestalt psychology (1929), Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York
41. Klank L.J.K., Huang Y.-H., and Johnson R.C. Determinants of success in matching word pairs in tests of phonetic symbolism. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 10 (1971) 140-148
42. Lee, J. -S. (1992). Phonology and sound symbolism in Korean ideophones. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.
43. Maguire M., Hennon E., Hirsh-Pasek K., Golinkoff R., Slutzky C., and Sootsman J. Mapping words to actions and events: How do 18-month-olds learn a verb?. In: Skarabela B., Fish S., and Do A.H. (Eds). Proceedings of the 27th annual Boston University conference on language (2002), Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA 371-382
44. Maurer, D., & Mondloch, C.J. (2006). The infant as synaesthete? In Y. Munakata & M. Johnson (Eds.), Processes of change in brain and cognitive development (Attention and Performance XXI) (pp. 449-471). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
45. Maurer D., Pathman T., and Mondloch C.J. The shape of boubas: Sound-shape correspondences in toddlers and adults. Developmental Science 9 3 (2006) 316-322
46. McGregor W. Ideophones as the source of verbs in northern Australian languages. In: Voeltz F.K.E., and Kilian-Hatz C. (Eds). Ideophones (2001), John Benjamins, Amsterdam
47. Mikone E. Ideophones in the Balto-Finnic languages. In: Voeltz F.K.E., and Kilian-Hatz C. (Eds). Ideophones (2001), John Benjamins, Amsterdam 223-233
48. Mok, W. E. (2001). Chinese sound symbolism: A phonological perspective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i.
49. Newmeyer F.J. Iconicity and generative grammar. Language 68 (1993) 756-796
50. Nuckolls J.B. Sounds like life (1996), Oxford University Press, New York
51. Nuckrolls J. The case for sound symbolism. Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999) 225-252
52. Nagumo, M., Imai, M., Kita, S., Haryu, E., & Kajikawa, S. (2006). Sound iconicity bootstraps verb meaning acquisition. Paper presented at the XVth International Conference of Infant Studies, Kyoto, Japan.
53. Oda, H. (2000). An embodied semantic mechanism for mimetic words in Japanese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.
54. Ogura, T. (2001) Meishi yuui, doushi yuui ni oyobosu hahaoya no gengo nyuryoku no kentou. (Influence of maternal input in the distribution of nouns and verbs in early vocabulary.) Ministry of Education and Science grant report. Kobe University.
55. Ramachandran V.S., and Hubbard E.M. Synaesthesia - A window into perception, thought, and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001) 3-34
56. Saffran J.R., Aslin R.N., and Neport E.L. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274 (1996) 1926-1928
57. Sapir E. A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12 (1929) 225-239
58. Schultze-Berndt E. Ideophone-like characteristics of uninflected predicates in Jaminjung (Australia). In: Voeltz F.K.E., and Kilian-Hatz C. (Eds). Ideophones (2001), John Benjamins, Amsterdam 355-374
59. Tardif T. Nouns are not always learned before verbs: Evidence from Mandarin speakers' early vocabulary. Developmental Psychology 32 (1996) 492-504
60. Tomasello M. The item based nature of children's early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (2000) 156-163
61. In: Voeltz F.K.E., and Kilian-Hatz C. (Eds). Ideophones (2001), John Benjamins, Amsterdam
62. Waxman S.R., and Klibanoff R. The role of comparison in the extension of novel adjectives. Developmental Psychology 36 (2000) 571-581
63. Werker J.F., Cohen L.B., Llyod V.L., Casasola M., and Stager C.L. Acquisition of word-object associations by 14-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology 34 (1998) 1289-1309
64. Watson R.L. A comparison of some Southeast Asian ideophones with some African ideophones. In: Voeltz F.K.E., and Kilian-Hatz C. (Eds). Ideophones (2001), John Benjamins, Amsterdam 385-405
65. Westbury C. Implicit sound symbolism in lexical access: Evidence from an interference task. Brain and Language 93 (2004) 10-19
66. Yoshida, H., & Smith, L. (2006). Dynamic properties of form and meaning and children's learning of verbs. Paper presented at the XVth International Conference of Infant Studies, Kyoto, Japan.