Phonological Wildness in Early Language Development - Exploring the Role of Onomatopoeia

Abstract

This study uses eye-tracking to single out the role of wild onomatopoeia in language development, as described by Rhodes (1994). Wildness – whereby extra-phonetic features are used in order to reproduce non-human sounds – is thought here to facilitate infants’ understanding of onomatopoeic word forms, providing a salient cue for segmentation and understanding in the input. Infants heard onomatopoeic forms produced in familiar and unfamiliar languages, presented in a phonologically wild (W) or tame (T) manner. W forms in both familiar and unfamiliar languages were hypothesised to elicit longer looking times than T forms in both familiar and unfamiliar languages. Results reflect the role that onomatopoeia play in early language development. Wildness was not found to be a factor in infants’ understanding of word forms, while reduplication and production knowledge of specific stimuli generated consistent responses across participants.