Phonological Motivation for the Acquisition of Onomatopoeia: An Analysis of Early Words

ABSTRACT

Onomatopoeia are disproportionately high in number in infants’ early words compared to adult language. Studies of infant language perception have proposed an iconic advantage for onomatopoeia, which may make them easier for infants to learn. This study analyses infants’ early word production to show a phonological motivation for onomatopoeia in early acquisition. Cross-linguistic evidence from 16 infants demonstrates how these forms fit within a phonologically-systematic developing lexicon. We observe a predominance of consonant harmony and open cv syllables in infants’ early words—structures that are typical of onomatopoeia across languages. Infants’ acquisition of onomatopoeia is shown to be driven by a preference for structures that are easy to plan and produce. These data present an original perspective on onomatopoeia in early development, highlighting the role of production in language acquisition in general, and onomatopoeic words in particular.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Marilyn Vihman for provision of the Maarja data and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Supplementary data can be found at https://github.com/cathelaing/Laing-ProsodicStructures-LLD.

Disclosure

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ As one reviewer noted, the use of the term “conventional” here might imply that onomatopoeia are unconventional, which is not the case. In this study we take the word “conventional” to refer to the more “adult-like” target form that is conventionally associated with the onomatopoeic word.

² With thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/J500215/1).