The road to language learning is not entirely iconic: Iconicity, neighborhood density, and frequency facilitate sign language acquisition
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Accepted manuscript
Date
DOI
Authors
Caselli, Naomi
Pyers, Jennie
Version
OA Version
Citation
Caselli, N. & Pyers, J. "The road to language learning is not entirely iconic: Iconicity, neighborhood density, and frequency facilitate sign language acquisition" Psychological Science, forthcoming.
Abstract
Iconic mappings between words and their meanings are far more prevalent than once estimated,
and seem to support children’s acquisition of new words, spoken or signed. We asked whether
iconicity’s prevalence in sign language overshadows other factors known to support spoken
vocabulary development, including neighborhood density (the number of lexical items
phonologically similar to the target), and lexical frequency. Using mixed-effects logistic
regressions, we reanalyzed 58 parental reports of native-signing deaf children’s American Sign
Language (ASL) productive acquisition of 332 signs (Anderson & Reilly, 2002), and found that
iconicity, neighborhood density, and lexical frequency independently facilitated vocabulary
acquisition. Despite differences in iconicity and phonological structure, signing children, like
children learning a spoken language, track statistical information about lexical items and their
phonological properties and leverage them to expand their vocabulary.