'Sticky' speech and other evocative words may improve language

New study finds that iconicity in parents' speech helps children learn new words

2021-05-17

(Press-News.org) Some words sound like what they mean. For example, "slurp" sounds like the noise we make when we drink from a cup, and "teeny" sounds like something that is very small. This resemblance between how a word sounds and what it means is known as iconicity.

In her lab at the University of Miami, Lynn Perry, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology, previously found that children tend to learn words higher in iconicity earlier in development then they do words lower in iconicity. She also found that adults tend to use more iconic words when they speak to children than when they speak to other adults.

"That got us curious about why," said Stephanie Custode, a doctoral student in psychology, who worked with Perry to answer questions posed by her prior work. "Does iconicity play a causal role in children's language development, helping them learn new words, eventually even those words that have non-iconic, or arbitrary, sound-meaning associations?"

For their new study, published in the journal END

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'Sticky' speech and other evocative words may improve language

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