Catherine Laing

Profile

Biography

My research focuses on how babies learn and produce their first words. I am interested in how babies and children draw on what they know in early lexical development; that is, how their existing phonological knowledge (developed through babble, input and early word learning) shapes what they learn next. I study early word learning more generally, but am also interested in the role of iconicity - specifically onomatopoeia - in lexical development, and my previous research considers why infants produce so many onomatopoeic words, such as moo, woof and choo choo, in their early vocabulary. 

I explore this line of research using acoustic, computational, observational and experimental approaches.

I am currently working on an ERC-selected/UKRI-funded project entitled Identifying the role of sensorimotor feedback as a mechanism of language learning in the first three years of life, which aims to explore the role of sensorimotor feedback in early vocal development using lingual ultrasound with infants aged 2-18 months. Read more about this project here.

Career

• Senior Lecturer in Developmental Linguistics
  University of York (2023-)
• Lecturer in Developmental Linguistics
  University of York (2021 - present)
• Lecturer in Linguistics
  Cardiff University (2017 - 2021)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Psychology and Neuroscience
  Duke University (2016 - 2017)
• Associate Lecturer, Linguistics
  University of York (2015 - 2016)
• PhD in Linguistics
  University of York (2012 - 2015)
• MA in Linguistics
  University of York (2009 - 2010)
• BA French and German (Language and Linguistics)
  University of York (2005 - 2009)

Teaching

Teaching

• Phonological Development (L24H/L54M)

Research

Research

My research is in the field of infant language development, specifically the phonetics and phonology of early perception and production. I’m interested in infants’ use of babble as a way to ‘rehearse’ and stabilize speech segments, and how infants’ developments in production influence their perception of the surrounding linguistic environment.

My work has focussed on topics such as:

• Onomatopoeia in early development: how infants produce and understand onomatopoeic words such as moo and woof woof, and how these are used in interactions with their caregivers;
• The sounds produced in babble, and how infants respond to those sounds in their environment (i.e. in caregiver speech or in object labels);
• Phonological networks: how similar are infants' early words to one another, and can we predict their early productions based on words they already know how to produce?

Current projects:

• Identifying the role of sensorimotor feedback as a mechanism of language learning in the first three years of life (ERC Starting Grant/UKRI, 2024-2029)
• Babble development and caregiver speech in British and Ugandan babies (British Academy 2023; in collaboration with Tamar Keren-Portnoy and Katie Slocombe)
• Size sound symbolism in mothers' speech to their infants (in collaboration with Tamar Keren-Portnoy, Ghada Khattab and Shayne Sloggett)
• Phonological networks in early lexical development

You can find out more about my past and current projects on my GitHub and OSF pages.

Publications

Publications

Published papers

• Laing, C. E. (2026). Systematicity over the course of early development: an analysis of phonological networks. Language and Speech, 69(1), 13-33.
• Laing, C. E., & Sümer, B. (2026). Iconic bootstrapping for language development: One size does not fit all. In K. Akita, O. Fischer & P. Perniss (Eds). Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language. pp. 569-588.
• Laing, C. E., & Vihman, M. M. (2026). Geminate consonants and emergent systematicity: A network analysis. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 70, 199-236.
• Laing, C. E. (2025). Vocal gestures in early multimodal communication: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek. First Language, 45(6), 753-757.
• Kalenkovich, E., Koorathota, S., Tor, S., Amatuni, A., Egan-Dailey, S., Moore, C., ... & Bergelson, E. (2025). A year of nouns from English-learning infants’ daily lives: The SEEDLingS-Nouns dataset: E. Kalenkovich et al. Behavior Research Methods, 57(11), 298.
• Laing, C. E. (2025). Phonological networks and systematicity in early lexical acquisition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 51(5), 825.
• Laing, C., Khattab, G., Sloggett, S. & Keren-Portnoy, T. (2024). Size Sound Symbolism in Mothers’ Speech to their Infants. Journal of Child Language [registered report]. First View article.
• Laing, C. E. (2024). Phonological Networks and Systematicity in Early Lexical Acquisition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication.
• Laing, C. E. & Bergelson, E. (2024). Analyzing the effect of sibling number on input and output in the first 18 months. Infancy, 29(2), 175-195.
• Kartushina, N., Mani, N., Aktan-Erciyes, A., Alaslani, K., Aldrich, N. J., Almohammadi, A., ... & Mayor, J. (2022). COVID-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains. Language Development Research, 2, 1-36.
• Laing, C. and Bergelson, E. 2020. From babble to words: Infants’ early productions match words and objects in their environment. Cognitive Psychology 122, article number: 101308.
• Laing, C. 2019. A role for onomatopoeia in early language: evidence from phonological development. Language and Cognition 11(2), pp. 173-187. 
• Laing, C. E. 2019. Phonological motivation for the acquisition of onomatopoeia: An analysis of early words. Language Learning and Development 15(2), pp. 177-197. 
• Laing, C. and Bergelson, E. 2019. Mothers’ work status and 17‐month‐olds’ productive vocabulary. Infancy 24(1), pp. 101-109. 
• Laing, C. E. 2017. A perceptual advantage for onomatopoeia in early word learning: Evidence from eye-tracking. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 161, pp. 32-45. 
• Laing, C., Vihman, M. and Keren-Portnoy, T. 2017. How salient are onomatopoeia in the early input? A prosodic analysis of infant-directed speech. Journal of Child Language 44(5), pp. 1117-1139. 
• Laing, C. E. 2014. A phonological analysis of onomatopoeia in early word production. First Language 34(5), pp. 387-405. 

Pre-Registered Studies

• Li, M., Blake, C., Oxley, F.A.R., Smith, K. & Laing, C. E. (in prep). Do 18- to 20-month-old infants show sensitivity to shape sound symbolism? Exploring the bouba-kiki effect and its links with articulatory experience. [pre-registered at https://osf.io/s8prt]
• Oxley, F.A.R., Blake, C., Li, M., Smith, K. & Laing, C. E. (in prep). “It’s on the tip of my tongue…”: Do infants’ earliest experiences of producing consonants influence the course of perceptual narrowing? [pre-registered at https://osf.io/deazk]
• Madhavan, R., Blake, C., Li, M., Oxley, F.A.R., Smith, K. & Laing, C. E. (in prep). Do infants prefer voluntary vocalisations from their own vocal tract over those of other infants? [pre-registered at https://osf.io/dc4q6]
• Laing, C. E., Blake, C., Li, M., Madhavan, R., Oxley, F.A.R. & Smith, K. (in prep). Properties of infant tongue movements in speech and non-speech contexts. [pre-registered at https://osf.io/kdf86]
• Keren-Portnoy, T., Belia, M., Cox, C., DePaolis, R., Khattab, G., Laing, C. E., Langner, A., Sloggett, S. & Vihman, M. M. (in prep). Size Sound Symbolism in Mothers’ Speech to their Infants: a corpus-based study. [pre-registered at https://osf.io/84mq]

External Activity

External Activity

Recent conference talks and invited presentations

July 2024. A phonological networks approach to systematicity in the developing lexicon. Oral presentation at the International Congress on Infant Studies (ICIS), Glasgow, UK, 10th July 2024.

July 2024. Belia, M., Cobb, S., Cox, C.M.M., Gully, A., Oxley, F.A.R. & Laing, C. The development of the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. Poster presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies, 11th July 2024, Glasgow, UK.

July 2024. Laing, C., Keren-Portnoy, T., Atim, S., Buryn-Weitzel, J.C., Donnellan, E., Hoffman, M., Jurua, M., Knapper, C.V., Lahiff1, N.J., Paricia, J., Tusiime, F., Wilke, C. & Slocombe, K. Babble development in English and Ugandan babies. Poster presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies, 9th July 2024, Glasgow, UK.

May 2024. A phonological networks approach to systematicity in the developing lexicon. IEEE 23rd International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL). Invited speaker, 23rd May 2024.

February 2024. Iconicity in British mothers' speech to their infants: from onomatopoeia to sound symbolism. Paper presented at Warwick Psychology Research Seminar, Online, 28th February 2024.

January 2024. Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological network analysis. Paper presented at LuCiD Research Seminar, Manchester, 29th January 2024.

August 2023. Laing, C. E., Khattab, G., Sloggett, S. & Keren-Portnoy, T., Size Sound Symbolism in Mothers’ Speech to their Infants. Paper presented at the 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 8th August 2024, Dusseldorf, Germany.

August 2023. Laing, C. E., Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological networks. Paper presented at the 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 8th August 2024, Dusseldorf, Germany.

March 2023. Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological network analysis. Paper presented at QMUL Research Seminar, London, 29th March 2023.

November 2022. Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological network analysis. Paper presented at LinG Colloquium, Göttingen, 3rd November 2022.

June 2022. Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological network analysis. Paper presented at the Building Linguistic Systems conference, York, June 2022.

June 2022. Laing, C. E. Exploring systematicity in the developing lexicon with phonological networks. Poster presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, 10th June 2022, San Sebastian, Spain.

Other external roles

General Editor, Language and Cognition