Iconicity in Language

Iconicity in Language
Author: Raffaele Simone
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1995-02-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027285705

Several current linguistic approaches converge in rejecting the wide-spread idea that language is an autonomous system, i.e. that it is structured independently from the outside world and the natural equipment of language users. Around the world, semiotically biased linguistics (functionalism, naturalism, etc.) takes this position, which differentiates it very clearly from generative linguistics. One of the basic assumptions of such approaches is that language structure includes some non-arbitrary aspects, from the phonological through the textual level, and a great amount of research has occurred in the last decade regarding the “iconic aspects” of language(s). This volume focuses on generally neglected dimensions of language and semiotic activity, featuring contributions by philosophers, linguists, semioticians, and psychologists. After tracing the tradition of iconicity in the history of linguistic thought, the central section is devoted to specific analyses emphasizing the role of non-arbitrary phenomena in language foundation and linguistic structure. Specifically discussed are numeration systems, the gestural systems of communication among deaf people, the genesis of writing in children, and inter-ethnic communication.

Iconicity in Language

Iconicity in Language
Author: Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1527548864

In linguistics, as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity between the form of a linguistic sign and its meaning. This book covers all aspects of linguistic iconicity in both spoken and signed languages, including definitions of all the relevant concepts and explanations of significant iconic words and expressions, and brief summaries of the contents and main proposals of 30 significant works in the history of iconicity research. It also provides definitions and exemplifications of the principles governing linguistic iconicity and brief overviews of iconic words and expressions in 11 language families and in more than 50 spoken and signed languages all over the world. The book contains 678 entries and more than 8,500 examples drawn from 400 languages, and will appeal to scholars and students interested in general linguistics, the history of linguistics, language typology, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and semiotics.

Naturalness and Iconicity in Language

Naturalness and Iconicity in Language
Author: Klaas Willems
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027243433

This volume examines unresolved issues in iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics, linguistic iconicity in semiotics, iconic structures in Sign Languages, natural and unnatural sound patterns, the iconic nature of parts of speech, the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness, and lexical and syntactic iconicity.

Iconicity and Analogy in Language Change

Iconicity and Analogy in Language Change
Author: Janice Aski
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2015-09-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1614516391

This book examines the alternation between accusative-dative and dative-accusative order in Old Florentine clitic clusters and its decline in favor of the latter. Based on an exhaustive analysis of data collected from medieval Florentine and Tuscan texts we offer a novel analysis of the rise of the variable order, the transition from one order to the other, and the demise of the alternation that relies primarily on iconicity and analogy. The book employs exophoric pragmatic iconicity, a language-external iconic relationship based on similarity between linguistic structure and the speaker/writer's conceptualization of reality, and endophoric iconicity, a language-internal iconic relationship where the iconic ground is construed between linguistic signs and structures. Analogy is viewed as a productive process that generalizes patterns or extends grammatical rules to formally similar structures, and obtains the form of the analogical relationship between the masculine singular definite article and the third person singular accusative clitic, which shared the same phonotactically constrained distribution patterns. The data indicate that exophoric pragamatic iconicity exploits and maintains the alternation, whereas endophoric iconicity and analogy conspire to end it.

Sign Language Phonology

Sign Language Phonology
Author: Diane Brentari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2019-11-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1107113474

Surveys key findings and ideas in sign language phonology, exploring the crucial areas in phonology to which sign language studies has contributed.

Form Miming Meaning

Form Miming Meaning
Author: Max Nänny
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 488
Release: 1999
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027221797

Annotation Presents selected papers from a March 1997 symposium held in Zurich, in sections on general topics, sound and rhythm, typography and graphic design, word-formation, and syntax and discourse. Studies explore iconicity from two different angles. A first group of scholars is especially interested in how far the primary code, the code of grammar, is influenced by iconic motivation and how originally iconic models have become conventionalized. A second group of contributors is more interested in the presence of iconicity as part of the secondary code. Specific subjects include imagination by ideophones, the visual poetry of e. e. cummings, and iconic use of syntax in fiction. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Language from the Body

Language from the Body
Author: Sarah F. Taub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2001-02-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1139428225

What is the role of meaning in linguistic theory? Generative linguists have severely limited the influence of meaning, claiming that language is not affected by other cognitive processes and that semantics does not influence linguistic form. Conversely, cognitivist and functionalist linguists believe that meaning pervades and motivates all levels of linguistic structure. This dispute can be resolved conclusively by evidence from signed languages. Signed languages are full of iconic linguistic items: words, inflections, and even syntactic constructions with structural similarities between their physical form and their referents' form. Iconic items can have concrete meanings and also abstract meanings through conceptual metaphors. Language from the Body rebuts the generativist linguistic theories which separate form and meaning and asserts that iconicity can only be described in a cognitivist framework where meaning can influence form.

Dimensions of Iconicity

Dimensions of Iconicity
Author: Angelika Zirker
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2017-09-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027265186

This volume addresses five different Dimensions of Iconicity. While some contributions examine the phonic dimensions of iconicity that are based on empirical, diachronic and theoretical work, others explore the function of similarity from a cognitive point of view. The section on multimodal dimensions takes into account philosophical, linguistic and literary perspectives in order to analyse, for example, the diagrammatic interplay of written texts and images. Contributions on performative dimensions of iconicity focus on Buddhist mantras, Hollywood films, and the dynamics of rhetorical structures in Shakespeare. Last but not least, the volume also addresses new ways of considering iconicity, including notational iconicity, the interplay of iconicity, ambiguity, interpretability, and the iconicity of literary analysis from a formal semanticist point of view.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics
Author: Dirk Geeraerts
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 1366
Release: 2010-06-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199738637

With 49 chapters written by experts in the field, this reference volume authoritatively covers cognitive linguistics, from basic concepts and models to practical applications.

Iconicity and Verb Agreement

Iconicity and Verb Agreement
Author: Marloes Oomen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110742845

In many sign languages around the world, some verbs express grammatical agreement, while many others do not. Curiously, there is a remarkable degree of semantic overlap across sign languages between verbs that do and do not possess agreement properties. This book scrutinizes the interaction between semantic and morphosyntactic structure in verb constructions in German Sign Language (DGS). Naturalistic dialogues from the DGS Corpus form the primary data source. It is shown that certain semantic properties, also known to govern transitivity marking in spoken languages, are predictive of verb type in DGS, where systematic iconic mappings play a mediating role. The results enable the formulation of cross-linguistic predictions about the interplay between verb semantics and verb type in sign languages. An analysis of the morphosyntactic properties of different verb types leads up to the conclusion that even ‘plain’ verbs agree with their arguments, where iconicity again plays a crucial role. The findings motivate a unified syntactic analysis in terms of agreement of constructions with verbs of all types, thus offering a novel solution to the typological puzzle that supposedly only a subset of verbs agree in DGS and other sign languages.