Woll, B;
(2014)
Moving from hand to mouth: echo phonology and the origins of language.
Front Psychol
, 5
, Article 662. 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00662.
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Abstract
Although the sign languages in use today are full human languages, certain of the features they share with gestures have been suggested to provide information about possible origins of human language. These features include sharing common articulators with gestures, and exhibiting substantial iconicity in comparison to spoken languages. If human proto-language was gestural, the question remains of how a highly iconic manual communication system might have been transformed into a primarily vocal communication system in which the links between symbol and referent are for the most part arbitrary. The hypothesis presented here focuses on a class of signs which exhibit: "echo phonology," a repertoire of mouth actions which are characterized by "echoing" on the mouth certain of the articulatory actions of the hands. The basic features of echo phonology are introduced, and discussed in relation to various types of data. Echo phonology provides naturalistic examples of a possible mechanism accounting for part of the evolution of language, with evidence both of the transfer of manual actions to oral ones and the conversion of units of an iconic manual communication system into a largely arbitrary vocal communication system.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Moving from hand to mouth: echo phonology and the origins of language. |
| Location: | Switzerland |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00662 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00662 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 Woll. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. PMCID: PMC4081976 |
| Keywords: | echo phonology, language origins, mouth gestures, neuroscience of sign language, sign language |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1437279 |
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