Non-Verbal Vocabularies

The average person understands the meaning of sounds beyond words that are part of a formal language.

Some of the sounds as modern 21st century person in the U.S. knows are the sounds that a crosswalk makes, the sound that the microwave makes when it's done, the sound that their alarm clock (these days, often on a phone) makes, the sounds that their phone makes when its ringing and when text messages arrive (and the sounds that the phones of other people they spend time around make), the sound that the dryer makes when its done, the sound of the oven time and the oven fan, the sound that the heat makes in the house when it turns on, the sound of the car running, emergency siren sounds for fire and police, the sound of a bicycle chime, the sound of a doorbell in homes that have one, the sound of your computer turning on, the sound that the fire alarm makes when it activates and when its battery is low, and so on.

People in different eras had different non-verbal vocabularies. They could diagnose more about a car from the sounds it made. They knew the sounds of a clock tower and the meaning of various bugle calls. Before that people knew the sounds of a gas light and of steam powered vehicles and knew far more horse related sounds. Before that extensive vocabularies of bird calls and forest sounds were more common.

It isn't clear to me that there are scholars who systemically catalog this, or references that do. My intuition is that the total size of a typical person's non-verbal vocabulary has been pretty constant over time, but that the content of that vocabulary has changed considerably and repeatedly over the last several centuries.