Iconicity emerges and is maintained in spoken language (original) (raw)
Related papers
Iconicity as a General Property of Language: Evidence from Spoken and Signed Languages
Frontiers in Psychology, 2010
Current views about language are dominated by the idea of arbitrary connections between linguistic form and meaning. However, if we look beyond the more familiar Indo-European languages and also include both spoken and signed language modalities, we find that motivated, iconic form-meaning mappings are, in fact, pervasive in language. In this paper, we review the different types of iconic mappings that characterize languages in both modalities, including the predominantly visually iconic mappings in signed languages. Having shown that iconic mapping are present across languages, we then proceed to review evidence showing that language users (signers and speakers) exploit iconicity in language processing and language acquisition. While not discounting the presence and importance of arbitrariness in language, we put forward the idea that iconicity need also be recognized as a general property of language, which may serve the function of reducing the gap between linguistic form and conceptual representation to allow the language system to "hook up" to motor and perceptual experience.
The bridge of iconicity: from a world of experience to the experience of language
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2014
Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant phenomenon for our understanding of language processing, development and evolution. Rather, the arbitrary and symbolic nature of language has long been taken as a design feature of the human linguistic system. In this paper, we propose an alternative framework in which iconicity in face-to-face communication (spoken and signed) is a powerful vehicle for bridging between language and human sensori-motor experience, and, as such, iconicity provides a key to understanding language evolution, development and processing. In language evolution, iconicity might have played a key role in establishing displacement (the ability of language to refer beyond what is immediately present), which is core to what language does; in ontogenesis, iconicity might play a critical role in supporting referentiality (learning to map ...
Journal of Cognition, 2021
Murgiano et al. make a compelling case for studying iconicity in multimodal face-toface interaction, but they appear ambivalent about the importance of iconicity at the level of the linguistic system. We argue that, rather than decreasing over time, iconicity is a stable property of languages. Understanding how and why this is so is critical to building a complete real-world theory of language that bridges the situated context of language use with language as an evolving symbolic system. An important point for future research is to examine the interface between iconic prosody and the latent iconic features of words and signs that are frozen in the linguistic system.
Cultural evolution leads to vocal iconicity in an experimental iterated learning task
Journal of Language Evolution, 2021
Experimental and cross-linguistic studies have shown that vocal iconicity is prevalent in words that carry meanings related to size and shape. Although these studies demonstrate the importance of vocal iconicity and reveal the cognitive biases underpinning it, there is less work demonstrating how these biases lead to the evolution of a sound symbolic lexicon in the first place. In this study, we show how words can be shaped by cognitive biases through cultural evolution. Using a simple experimental setup resembling the game telephone, we examined how a single word form changed as it was passed from one participant to the next by a process of immediate iterated learning. About 1,500 naïve participants were recruited online and divided into five condition groups. The participants in the control-group received no information about the meaning of the word they were about to hear, while the participants in the remaining four groups were informed that the word meant either big or small (w...
Iconicity in the emergence of a phonological system
Journal of Language Evolution, 2023
Iconicity has been described as an impetus for creating sign forms in emerging sign languages and forming signs in established sign languages. Iconic signs are defined as spontaneous or stable signs that directly reflect the representation of their referent. In established sign languages, iconic signs have phonological features. Regarding the link between the motivation for iconic signs and phonological features, we aim to investigate how iconicity might influence the emergence of a phonological system along with the evolution of a new sign language by observing how the rise of a phonological system might be revealed by the evolution of emerging iconic gestures and signs in a new sign language. For this purpose, we inventoried and coded the iconicity nature and phonological structure of 200 signed lexical items collected in two moments of Sao Tome and Principe Sign Language (LGSTP) emergence: at T1 (after 2 years since the deaf habitants initiated their social meetings) and T2 (8 years subsequent to T1 data collection). In the 8 years of LGSTP's emergence, we found a dominance of iconic signs in tandem with changes in the signs' internal structure. The handshape is revealed to be the phonological parameter with the greatest development, presenting itself as more complex. The LGSTP lexicon reveals that iconicity seems to prompt the emergence of sign forms. However, iconic strategies remain stable across the evolution of the emergent signs and are independent of the internal structure change of the sign.
Iconicity in word learning and beyond: A critical review
2018
Interest in iconicity (the resemblance-based mapping between aspects of form and meaning) is in the midst of a resurgence, and a prominent focus in the field has been the possible role of iconicity in language learning. Here we critically review theory and empirical findings in this domain. We distinguish local learning enhancement (where iconicity influences learning at the level of individual iconic lexical items) and general learning enhancement (where iconicity influences the later learning of non-iconic items or systems). We find that evidence for local learning enhancement is quite strong, though not as clear cut as it is often described. Despite common claims about broader facilitatory effects of iconicity on learning, we find that current evidence for general learning enhancement is lacking. We suggest a number of productive avenues for future research and specify what types of evidence would be required to show a role for iconicity general learning enhancement. We also revi...
Iconicity is in the eye of the beholder: How language experience affects perceived iconicity
Investigations of iconicity in signed language processing often rely on non-signer ratings to determine whether signs are iconic, implying that iconicity can be objectively evaluated by individuals with no prior exposure to a linguistic form. We question the assumption that iconicity is an objective property of the form of a sign and argue that iconicity arises from individuals’ experience with the world and their language, and is subjectively mediated by the signer’s construal of form and meaning. We test this hypothesis by asking American Sign Language (ASL) signers and German Sign Language (DGS) signers to rate iconicity of 86 ASL and DGS signs. Native signers consistently rate signs in their own language as more iconic than foreign language signs under a wide range of conditions. The results demonstrate that iconicity is not an objective characteristic of a sign form, and is instead specific to individual construals of form and meaning.
I see what you did there: The role of iconicity in the acquisition of signs
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang12), 2018
Recent theoretical syntheses offer a view of language in which iconicity-a perceived resemblance between form and meaning-is seen as a fundamental design feature alongside arbitrariness (Dingemanse et. al. 2015). Under this view, iconicity serves to bootstrap acquisition, and there is a large body of work from both spoken and gestural modalities confirming that iconic signs are easier to acquire than arbitrary signs (for an overview, see Lockwood & Dingemanse, 2015; Perniss et. al. 2010). However, two recent studies suggest a more nuanced picture of iconicity's contribution to learning: In an artificial language learning experiment using a whistled language, Verhoef et. al. (2016) found that whistles were reproduced less accurately in a condition where iconicity was possible compared to a condition where iconicity was disrupted by scrambling the correspondence between signals and meanings. Similarly, in a longitudinal study of phonological development in British Sign Language (BSL) learners, Ortega & Morgan (2015) found that learners produce iconic signs with less articulatory accuracy than arbitrary signs of equal complexity. These two results are apparently contradictory to the idea that iconicity provides a learning advantage, but we suggest this is because most iconicity learning studies have focused on the acquisition of the mapping between form and meaning, thus potentially obscuring subtleties relating to the acquisition of the form. We present the results of an experiment focusing on iconicity's role in the acquisition of forms. In line with Ortega & Morgan (2015) and Verhoef et. al. (2016), we predict that while iconicity helps to acquire new mappings, it may also lead to less precise encoding of forms. We presented learners (n = 36, no previous experience of a signed language) with an artificial gestural language based on iconic and arbitrary signs from BSL. We measured performance on an immediate imitation task, using the 3D body-tracking capabilities of Microsoft Kinect to quantify the trajectories of learners' wrists during production. This allows comparison of gestures produced by different participants using Dynamic
Gesture, 2017
A renewed interest in understanding the role of iconicity in the structure and processing of signed languages is hampered by the conflation of iconicity and transparency in the definition and operationalization of iconicity as a variable. We hypothesize that iconicity is fundamentally different than transparency since it arises from individuals' experience with the world and their language, and is subjectively mediated by the signers' construal of form and meaning. We test this hypothesis by asking American Sign Language (ASL) signers and German Sign Language (DGS) signers to rate iconicity of ASL and DGS signs. Native signers consistently rate signs in their own language as more iconic than foreign language signs. The results demonstrate that the perception of iconicity is intimately related to language-specific experience. Discovering the full ramifications of iconicity for the structure and processing of signed languages requires operationalizing this construct in a manner that is sensitive to language experience.