TY - JOUR

T1 - Young children spontaneously recreate core properties of language in a new modality

AU - Bohn, Manuel

AU - Kachel, Gregor

AU - Tomasello, Michael

N1 - Funding Information: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Tünde Malomvölgyi, Anna Seidel, Tom Hausmann, Anja Dreves, Claudia Salomo, Matthias Allritz, Ailis Cournane, and Cristina Zickert. M.B. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 749229. Funding Information: We thank T?nde Malomv?lgyi, Anna Seidel, Tom Hausmann, Anja Dreves, Claudia Salomo, Matthias Allritz, Ailis Cournane, and Cristina Zickert. M.B. received funding from the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 749229. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

PY - 2019/12/17

Y1 - 2019/12/17

N2 - How the world’s 6,000+ natural languages have arisen is mostly unknown. Yet, new sign languages have emerged recently among deaf people brought together in a community, offering insights into the dynamics of language evolution. However, documenting the emergence of these languages has mostly consisted of studying the end product; the process by which ad hoc signs are transformed into a structured communication system has not been directly observed. Here we show how young children create new communication systems that exhibit core features of natural languages in less than 30 min. In a controlled setting, we blocked the possibility of using spoken language. In order to communicate novel messages, including abstract concepts, dyads of children spontaneously created novel gestural signs. Over usage, these signs became increasingly arbitrary and conventionalized. When confronted with the need to communicate more complex meanings, children began to grammatically structure their gestures. Together with previous work, these results suggest that children have the basic skills necessary, not only to acquire a natural language, but also to spontaneously create a new one. The speed with which children create these structured systems has profound implications for theorizing about language evolution, a process which is generally thought to span across many generations, if not millennia.

AB - How the world’s 6,000+ natural languages have arisen is mostly unknown. Yet, new sign languages have emerged recently among deaf people brought together in a community, offering insights into the dynamics of language evolution. However, documenting the emergence of these languages has mostly consisted of studying the end product; the process by which ad hoc signs are transformed into a structured communication system has not been directly observed. Here we show how young children create new communication systems that exhibit core features of natural languages in less than 30 min. In a controlled setting, we blocked the possibility of using spoken language. In order to communicate novel messages, including abstract concepts, dyads of children spontaneously created novel gestural signs. Over usage, these signs became increasingly arbitrary and conventionalized. When confronted with the need to communicate more complex meanings, children began to grammatically structure their gestures. Together with previous work, these results suggest that children have the basic skills necessary, not only to acquire a natural language, but also to spontaneously create a new one. The speed with which children create these structured systems has profound implications for theorizing about language evolution, a process which is generally thought to span across many generations, if not millennia.

KW - Cognitive development

KW - Evolution

KW - Gesture

KW - Language

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076692624&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1904871116

DO - 10.1073/pnas.1904871116

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 31792169

AN - SCOPUS:85076692624

VL - 116

SP - 26072

EP - 26077

JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)

JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)

SN - 0027-8424

IS - 51

ER -