This is downvoted, perhaps as a 'lazy dismissal'? But I read the SciAm article and I don't think it actually explained this point.

The finding seems to be that the bouba-kiki effect is not specific to humans and does not depend on experience. And the previously-existing theory is presented like so:

> scientists have considered [the bouba-kiki effect] a clue to the origin of language, theorizing that maybe our ancestors built their first words upon these instinctive associations between sound and meaning.

The finding is supposed to undermine, or at least challenge, the theory. But why? Is the point just that, if other species also have the bouba-kiki effect but do not have language, the bouba-kiki effect probably doesn't play as important a role as we thought? That seems to be the implication (though the innate/learned distinction also seems to be relevant, and I'm not sure why that is) -- but surely the bouba-kiki effect was never believed to be anything like a sufficient condition for the development of language, was it?

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owyn 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The word "challenge" in the article title is clickbait. I guess the assumption challenged is that this measurable effect is for humans only because we are so special? Good as a headline for a non-science audience that mostly doesn't believe in evolution. It's pretty obvious that our auditory and visual systems are older than humanity as a species. I'd be surprised if the results were anything but confirming. Chickens are not going to learn English. Other species use sound to communicate and that this effect is measurable is pretty cool.

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suddenlybananas 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But no serious linguist thinks that kiki-bouba is that important to language. It's a theory that mistakenly thinks that hard problem in language is coming up with words for objects instead of the actually hard problem of combining words in a systematic way.

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lillesvin an hour ago | parent [-]

> But no serious linguist thinks that kiki-bouba is that important to language.

Do you have a source on that? Because I would expect anyone studying sound symbolism to find the bouba-kiki effect extremely important which is probably why it's such a widely cited study, also inside linguistics.

	▲	suddenlybananas an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's hard to find a source for that kind of negative statement. Kiki-bouba is important for sound-symbolism definitely! But sound-symbolism is marginal when it comes to language. Iconicity and similar things are very interesting phenomena but they're not the difficult part of language at all and they're not necessary parts of language.

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suddenlybananas 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I'm not sure why it's being downvoted, I don't dismiss the study at all (I'm the one who originally posted it!). I just think the scientific reporting on it is very odd. It's an interesting study in terms of what it has to say about innate vs learnt associations.

>scientists have considered [the bouba-kiki effect] a clue to the origin of language, theorizing that maybe our ancestors built their first words upon these instinctive associations between sound and meaning.

I suppose just working in linguistics, I find this such a fringe and unserious theory. The hard part of language isn't associating sounds with objects (dogs can do that), it's putting those words together to make novel meanings.