Iconicity in Language

Iconicity in Language PDF

Author: Raffaele Simone

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1995-02-10

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9027285705

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Iconic Books and Texts

Iconic Books and Texts PDF

Author: James Washington Watts

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781845539856

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume is the first comprehensive survey of iconic books and texts. It traces their development and influence from ancient to modern times and compares their roles in multiple cultures and religious traditions.

Dimensions of Iconicity

Dimensions of Iconicity PDF

Author: Angelika Zirker

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 9027265186

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Iconicity in Language

Iconicity in Language PDF

Author: Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-03-26

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1527548864

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Iconicity

Iconicity PDF

Author: Masako K. Hiraga

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-02-15

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9027268835

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Iconicity: East Meets West presents an intersection of East-West scholarship on Iconicity. Several of its chapters thus deal with Asian languages and cultures, or a comparison of world languages. Divided into four categories: general issues; sound symbolism and mimetics; iconicity in literary texts; and iconic motivation in grammar, the chapters show the diversity and dynamics of iconicity research, ranging from iconicity as a driving force in language structure and change, to the various uses of images, diagrams and metaphors at all levels of the literary text, in both narrative and poetic forms, as well as on all varieties of discourse, including the visual and the oral.

Operationalizing Iconicity

Operationalizing Iconicity PDF

Author: Pamela Perniss

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 9027261415

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Iconicity in Language and Literature series has long been dedicated to the recognition and understanding of the pervasiveness of iconicity in language in its many forms and functions. The present volume, divided into four sections, brings together and unifies different perspectives on iconicity. Chapters in the first section (Iconicity in language) provide linguistic analyses of systems of iconic forms in different languages, across both space (areally) and time (diachronically). The second section (Iconicity in literature) is concerned with stylistic analyses of iconicity in literature, in both poetry and prose and across a range of devices and genres. The third section (Iconicity in visual media) highlights the use and effects of iconicity in pictorial, photographic and cinematic media. The final section (Iconicity in semiotic analysis) offers a theoretical perspective, targeting an operationalisation of iconicity with respect to the relationship between types and subtypes of Peircean signs.

Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems

Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems PDF

Author: Sara Lenninger

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 9027257574

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume investigates iconicity as to both comprehension and production of meaning in language, gesture, pictures, art and literature. It highlights iconic processes in meaning-making and interpretation across different semiotic systems at structurally, historically and pragmatically different levels of iconicity, with special focus on Cognitive Semiotics. Exploring the ubiquity of iconicity in verbal, visual and gestural communication, these contributions discuss it from the point of view of human meaning-making, examined as a phenomenon that is experienced, embodied and often polysemiotic in nature.

Iconicity and Analogy in Language Change

Iconicity and Analogy in Language Change PDF

Author: Janice Aski

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1614516391

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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 bookemploys 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.

Naturalness and Iconicity in Language

Naturalness and Iconicity in Language PDF

Author: Klaas Willems

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-12-10

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9027290768

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of 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. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.

Iconicity in Syntax

Iconicity in Syntax PDF

Author: John Haiman

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1985-01-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 902722871X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.