Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to. First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more iconic (...) than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity and systematicity. We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English. (shrink)

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance. This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed and size. Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed (...) was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech. (shrink)

Gesture-first theories of language origins often raise two unsubstantiated arguments against vocal origins. First, they argue that great ape vocal behavior is highly constrained, limited to a fixed, species-typical repertoire of reflexive calls. Second, they argue that vocalizations lack any significant potential to ground meaning through iconicity, or resemblance between form and meaning. This paper reviews the considerable evidence that debunks these two “myths”. Accumulating evidence shows that the great apes exercise voluntary control over their vocal behavior, including their breathing (...) apparatus, larynx, and supralaryngeal articulators. They are also able to learn new vocal behaviors, and even show some rudimentary ability for vocal imitation. In addition, an abundance of research demonstrates that the vocal modality affords rich potential for iconicity. People can understand iconicity in sound symbolism, and they can produce iconic vocalizations to communicate a diverse range of meanings. Thus, two of the primary arguments against vocal origins theories are not tenable. As an alternative, the paper concludes that the origins of language – going as far back as our last common ancestor with great apes – are rooted in iconicity in both gesture and vocalization. (shrink)

Several disciplines within the cognitive sciences have advanced the idea that people comprehend the actions of others, including the linguistic meanings they communicate, through embodied simulations where they imaginatively recreate the actions they observe or hear about. This claim has important consequences for theories of mind and meaning, such as that people’s use and interpretation of language emerges as a kind of bodily activity that is an essential part of ordinary cognition. Daniel Weiskopf presents several arguments against the idea that (...) experiential simulations play a major role in immediate language use and meaning. We offer several rebuttals to Weiskopf, in which we critique his interpretation of simulation theory, present additional psycholinguistic evidence supportive of the simulation perspective, and suggest that a more traditional theory of linguistic meaning and processing has little psychological and empirical validity.Keywords: Language; Comprehension; Embodied cognition; Embodied simulation; Linguistic meaning, Psycholinguistics. (shrink)