Data from: Iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols

Studies of gestural communication systems find that they originate from spontaneously created iconic gestures. Yet, we know little about how people create vocal communication systems, and many have suggested that vocalizations do not afford iconicity beyond trivial instances of onomatopoeia. It is unknown whether people can generate vocal communication systems through a process of iconic creation similar to gestural systems. Here, we examine the creation and development of a rudimentary vocal symbol system in a laboratory setting. Pairs of participants generated novel vocalizations for 18 different meanings in an iterative ‘vocal’ charades communication game. The communicators quickly converged on stable vocalizations, and naive listeners could correctly infer their meanings in subsequent playback experiments. People's ability to guess the meanings of these novel vocalizations was predicted by how close the vocalization was to an iconic ‘meaning template’ we derived from the production data. These results strongly suggest that the meaningfulness of these vocalizations derived from iconicity. Our findings illuminate a mechanism by which iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols, analogous to the function of iconicity in gestural communication systems.

针对手势通信系统（gestural communication systems）的相关研究表明，此类系统起源于自发产生的象似性手势（iconic gestures）。然而，我们对人类如何构建语音通信系统（vocal communication systems）的认知仍十分有限，且诸多研究认为，除拟声词（onomatopoeia）这类极简单的案例外，发声行为难以承载象似性。目前尚不清楚人类是否能够通过与手势系统类似的象似性创造过程，构建出语音通信系统。本研究于实验室环境中，探究了初级语音符号系统（vocal symbol system）的创建与演化过程。双人搭档参与者在迭代式“语音猜词游戏”（vocal charades）中，为18种不同语义生成了全新的发声行为。交流者们快速达成共识，形成了稳定的发声行为；在后续的回放实验中，未经过训练的听众能够正确推断出这些发声行为对应的语义。参与者对这些新型发声行为语义的猜中概率，取决于该发声与我们从生成数据中推导得到的象似性语义模板（meaning template）的匹配程度。上述结果有力表明，这些发声行为的语义性源自象似性。本研究结果揭示了一种机制：象似性能够为语音符号的创建奠定基础，其作用与象似性在手势通信系统中的功能类似。