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Iconicity
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Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed in structuralist, formalist and generative approaches to linguistics). The principle of iconicity is also shared by the approach of linguistic typology.
Iconic principles:
The use of quantity of phonetic material to iconically mark increased quality or quantity can be noted in the lengthening of words to indicate a greater degree, such as "looong". It is also common to use reduplication to iconically mark increase, as Edward Sapir is quoted, “The process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance” (1921:79). This has been confirmed by the comparative studies of Key (1965) and Moravcsik (1978). This can be seen, for example, in Amharic, where täsäbbärä means "it was broken" and täsäbbabärä means that "it was shattered".
Iconic coding principles may be natural tendencies in language and are also part of our cognitive and biological make-up. Whether iconicity is a part of language is an open debate in linguistics. For instance, Haspelmath has argued against iconicity, claiming that most iconic phenomena can be explained by frequency biases: since simpler meanings tend to be more frequent in the language use they tend to lose phonological material.
Onomatopoeia (and mimesis more broadly) may be seen as a kind of iconicity, though even onomatopoeic sounds have a large degree of arbitrariness.
Derek Bickerton has posited that iconic signs, both verbal and gestural, were crucial in the evolution of human language. Animal communication systems, Bickerton has argued, are largely composed of indexical (and, occasionally, iconic) signs, whereas in human language, "most words are symbolic, and ... without symbolic words we couldn’t have language". The distinction Bickerton draws between these categories is one of displacement, with the indexical signs of animal communication systems having no capacity for displacement, and the symbolic signs of human language requiring it. Iconic signs, however, "may or may not have it depending on how they’re used ... iconicity, therefore, is the most probable road that our ancestors took into language".
Using a niche-construction view of human evolution, Bickerton has hypothesized that human ancestors used iconic signs as recruitment signals in the scavenging of dead megafauna. This process "would have created new words and deployed old words in new contexts, further weakening the uncoupling of words from situations, from current occurrence—even from fitness", and thus allowing for the creation of symbolic language.
In The Symbolic Species, Terrence Deacon argues that the emanation of symbolic capacities unique to language was a critical factor in the evolution of the human brain, and that these symbolic capacities are vital to differentiating animal from human forms of communication, processes of learning, and brain anatomy. "The doorway into this virtual world was opened to us alone by the evolution of language, because language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought—symbolic representation."
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Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed in structuralist, formalist and generative approaches to linguistics). The principle of iconicity is also shared by the approach of linguistic typology.
Iconic principles:
The use of quantity of phonetic material to iconically mark increased quality or quantity can be noted in the lengthening of words to indicate a greater degree, such as "looong". It is also common to use reduplication to iconically mark increase, as Edward Sapir is quoted, “The process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance” (1921:79). This has been confirmed by the comparative studies of Key (1965) and Moravcsik (1978). This can be seen, for example, in Amharic, where täsäbbärä means "it was broken" and täsäbbabärä means that "it was shattered".
Iconic coding principles may be natural tendencies in language and are also part of our cognitive and biological make-up. Whether iconicity is a part of language is an open debate in linguistics. For instance, Haspelmath has argued against iconicity, claiming that most iconic phenomena can be explained by frequency biases: since simpler meanings tend to be more frequent in the language use they tend to lose phonological material.
Onomatopoeia (and mimesis more broadly) may be seen as a kind of iconicity, though even onomatopoeic sounds have a large degree of arbitrariness.
Derek Bickerton has posited that iconic signs, both verbal and gestural, were crucial in the evolution of human language. Animal communication systems, Bickerton has argued, are largely composed of indexical (and, occasionally, iconic) signs, whereas in human language, "most words are symbolic, and ... without symbolic words we couldn’t have language". The distinction Bickerton draws between these categories is one of displacement, with the indexical signs of animal communication systems having no capacity for displacement, and the symbolic signs of human language requiring it. Iconic signs, however, "may or may not have it depending on how they’re used ... iconicity, therefore, is the most probable road that our ancestors took into language".
Using a niche-construction view of human evolution, Bickerton has hypothesized that human ancestors used iconic signs as recruitment signals in the scavenging of dead megafauna. This process "would have created new words and deployed old words in new contexts, further weakening the uncoupling of words from situations, from current occurrence—even from fitness", and thus allowing for the creation of symbolic language.
In The Symbolic Species, Terrence Deacon argues that the emanation of symbolic capacities unique to language was a critical factor in the evolution of the human brain, and that these symbolic capacities are vital to differentiating animal from human forms of communication, processes of learning, and brain anatomy. "The doorway into this virtual world was opened to us alone by the evolution of language, because language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought—symbolic representation."