Iconicity and Diachronic Language Change

Iconicity, the resemblance between form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being key feature origins language, yet presence natural languages seems limited. In diachronic study change, we investigated extent to which is stable property vocabulary, alongside previously psycholinguistic predictors change. Analyzing 784 English words with data their historical forms, found that are higher iconicity, longer length, earlier acquired during development, but role frequency grammatical category may be less important than suggested. Iconicity revealed as ultra-conserved potentially also vocabulary early history origins.