{"pk":26844,"title":"Creating words from iterated vocal imitation","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We report the results of a large-scale (N=1571) experiment toinvestigate whether spoken words can emerge from the processof repeated imitation. Participants played a version of the chil-dren’s game “Telephone”. The first generation was asked toimitate recognizable environmental sounds (e.g., glass break-ing, water splashing); subsequent generations imitated the im-itators for a total of 8 generations. We then examined whetherthe vocal imitations became more stable and word-like, re-tained a resemblance to the original sound, and became moresuitable as learned category labels. The results showed (1) theimitations became progressively more word-like, (2) even af-ter 8 generations, they could be matched above chance to theenvironmental sound that motivated them, and (3) imitationsfrom later generations were more effective as learned cate-gory labels. These results show how repeated imitation cancreate progressively more word-like forms while retaining asemblance of iconicity.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"categorization; transmission chain; language evo-lution"}],"section":"Talks: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bj5w55m","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Pierce","middle_name":"","last_name":"Edmiston","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Marcus","middle_name":"","last_name":"Perlman","name_suffix":"","institution":"Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics","department":""},{"first_name":"Gary","middle_name":"","last_name":"Lupyan","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsi -Madison","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T10:00:00-08:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26844/galley/16480/download/"}]}