Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures

Aleksandra Ćwiek,Ádám Szalontai,Nathalie Schümchen,Özlem Ünal-Logacev,Pärtel Lippus,Christoph Draxler,Rachid Ridouane,Shigeto Kawahara,Bodo Winter,Susanne Fuchs,Sabine Reiter,Caterina Petrone,Jochen Zeller,Katri Hiovain,Dan Dediu,Jing Paul,Grace E Oh,Eva Liina Asu,Manfred Krifka,Gary Lupyan,Sofia Koutalidis,Marcus Perlman

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89445-4

Abstract

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence. However, it is debated whether vocalizations could have played a similar role. We report the first extensive cross-cultural study investigating whether people from diverse linguistic backgrounds can understand novel vocalizations for a range of meanings. In two comprehension experiments, we tested whether vocalizations produced by English speakers could be understood by listeners from 28 languages from 12 language families. Listeners from each language were more accurate than chance at guessing the intended referent of the vocalizations for each of the meanings tested. Our findings challenge the often-cited idea that vocalizations have limited potential for iconic representation, demonstrating that in the absence of words people can use vocalizations to communicate a variety of meanings.

Highlights

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence
A key feature that distinguishes human language from other animal communication systems is its vast semantic breadth, which is rooted in the open-ended ability to create new expressions for new meanings
Many other animals use fixed, species-typical vocalizations to communicate information about their emotional state[1,2] or to call out in alarm of specific classes of p redators[3], but only language serves for open reference of vocabulary to the myriad entities, actions, properties, relations, and abstractions that humans experience and imagine. This apparent gap presents a puzzle for understanding the emergence of language: how was human communication emancipated from the closed communication systems of other animals?

Summary

Introduction

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence. Many other animals use fixed, species-typical vocalizations to communicate information about their emotional state[1,2] or to call out in alarm of specific classes of p redators[3], but only language serves for open reference of vocabulary to the myriad entities, actions, properties, relations, and abstractions that humans experience and imagine. Unlike gestures, vocalizations cannot, to any significant degree, be used to facilitate communication between people who lack a shared vocabulary This idea rests on the widely held and often-repeated claim that spoken language is primarily characterized by arbitrariness, where forms and meanings are related to each other only via conventional association[16]. The arbitrariness of spoken words is thought to be the result of an intrinsic constraint on the medium of speech[17], with iconicity limited to the negligible exception of onomatopoeic words for sounds, such as meow (sound of a cat) and bang (sound of a sharp noise)[18,19]

Methods

Results

Conclusion