The papers in this volume all explore one kind of functional explanation for various aspects of linguistic form – iconicity: linguistic forms are frequently the way they are because they resemble the conceptual structures they are used to convey, or, linguistic structures resemble each other because the different conceptual domains they represent are thought of in the same way. The papers in Part I of this volume deal with aspects of motivation, the ways in which the linguistic form is a diagram of conceptual structure, and homologous with it in interesting ways. Most of the papers in Part II focus on isomorphism, the tendency to associate a single invariant meaning with each single invariant form. The papers in Part III deal with the apparent arbitrariness that arises from competing motivations.

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.

The view that language is in some way 'arbitrary', that there is no formal relationship between a linguistic message and the thought it is meant to convey, is long established and pervasive. The goal of John Haiman's study is to challenge the monopoly of arbitrariness, which he believes has affected in significant ways many models of linguistic description and analysis, notably those proposed by Saussure and more recently by Chomsky and his associates. Linguistic structures, Dr Hainian claims, may be compared to (non-linguistic) diagrams of our thoughts, and deviate from iconicity in many of the same ways and for much the same reasons as do diagrams in general. Arbitrariness develops as a result of the relatively familiar principles of economy, generalization and association. In relation to this thesis, Dr Haiman considers a wide variety of constructions, including conditionals and interrogatives, gapping, causative structures, auxiliaries and reflexives, and provides a wealth of exemplification from different languages that also points to typological differences in respect of iconicity.

Iconicity has become a popular notion in contemporary linguistic research. This book is the first to present a synthesis of the vast amount of scholarship on linguistic iconicity which has been produced in the previous decades, ranging from iconicity in phonology and morpho-syntax to the role of iconicity in language change. An extensive analysis is provided of some basic but nonetheless fundamental questions relating to iconicity in language, including: what is a linguistic sign and how are linguistic signs different from signs in general? What is an iconic sign and how may iconicity be involved in language? How does iconicity pertain to the relation between language and cognition? This book offers a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for iconicity in language. It is argued that the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary, but that iconicity may be involved on a secondary level, adding extra meaning to an utterance.

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.

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).

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.