Iconicity Chains In Sign Languages (original) (raw)
Stephen Anderson warns that approaches to linguistic universals that derive facts about language from the structure of the Language faculty or from external forces shaping the Primary Linguistic Data— where these two sources must be taken as mutually exclusive – not only are difficult to support since the two modes of explanation are entangled, but wrong (Anderson 2008). External forces shaping the Primary Linguistic Data can result in grammatical regularities – true properties of language – but, in order to recognize them, we must “take into account the filtering role of the perceptual systems through which these [brute physical facts] are presented to the mind for interpretation” (Anderson 2016:13). In the communication systems of other species we find that particularities of biology are connected to pathways for messages. The same should be true for humans. “Why, in fact, might we be tempted to believe otherwise?” (Anderson 2011:364). Why, indeed? This paper argues for iconicity ...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.