Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff and I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about how

language may have started with iconic sounds rather than hand gestures.

Then you'll learn about the limitations of artificial intelligence,

with help from leading AI researcher and Oxford professor Michael Waldridge.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

Researchers have found a missing link.

No, not the missing link.

That's actually not a thing.

Anyway, what I'm talking about is a transitional moment in the evolution of language.

The new evidence isn't an artifact from the past. It's a new study involving hundreds of people who speak dozens of languages.

See, if you're trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your language,

you'd probably turn to gestures to get your point across.

You might walk with your fingers to say you'll get there by foot,

or mimic the act of writing to ask for a pen.

These work because there's a connection between the gesture and the idea you're trying to get across.

In linguistics terms, the gesture is iconic.

Evolutionary linguists have been debating whether sounds that humans make are also iconic.

Everyone thinks some are. You know, meow, buzz, chirp. Some iconoclastic researchers are

building the case that a lot of sounds convey something about the thing they mean.

To test out the theory, researchers started out with 30 sounds that English speakers had to come

up with to express basic concepts.

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