What the [beep] ? Six-month-olds link novel communicative signals to meaning

•Listening to language facilitates infants’ object categorization.•We ask, will six-month-olds link a novel signal to categorization in the same way?•We reveal that a novel communicative signal can promote infants’ categorization.•This effect cannot be reduced to signal familiarity alone.•Links between language and concepts may emerge from early attention to communication.