This study aims to find out whether speakers of different language backgrounds (English, French, Spanish, and Macedonian) are sensitive to semantic associations (‘fluid’ and ‘forcible contact’) attached respectively to two purported phonaesthemes (/fl-/ and /tr-/). Participants completed the task in oral and written conditions. They had to match phonaestheme-related definitions with either of two non-words (one phonaestheme-bearing and the other containing a distractor). The results obtained indicate that participants significantly chose non-words beginning with /tr-/ when the definition activated a meaning (...) related to forcible contact, and non-words starting with /fl-/ when the definitions made reference to fluids in the four languages. The results point to the existence of non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations. A corpus-driven study of frequencies of lemmas and word tokens starting with the purported phonaesthemes also sheds light on the possible origin of the phonaesthemic associations, suggesting that both iconicity and systematicity motivate such associations. The results obtained are interpreted in the context of a functional, usage-based model of language, which can accommodate the existence of iconic tendencies, the role of learning and linguistic experience in language, and arbitrariness. (shrink)

Our study focuses on the perception of the iconicity of handshapes – one of the formational parameters of the sign in signed language. Seventy Hebrew speakers were asked to match handshapes to Hebrew translations of 45 signs, which are specified for one of the handshapes in Israeli Sign Language. The results show that participants reliably match handshapes to corresponding sign translations for highly iconic signs, but are less accurate for less iconic signs. This demonstrates that there is a notable degree (...) of iconicity in the lexicon of ISL, which is recognizable even to non-signers. The ability of non-signers to detect handshape to form is explained by the fact that word meanings are understood by both deaf and hearing peoples via the mental elaboration of simple iconic sources in which handshape meanings are grounded. The results suggest that while language external iconic mapping could ease the learning of direct iconic forms, it has a more limited capacity to help hearing non-signers learn indirect and opaque forms. The full semiotic distribution of handshapes in the lexicon and their use in language remain difficult for hearing non-signers to understand and depends on more specific language and cultural knowledge. (shrink)

Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of linguistic (...) means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms. (shrink)

Investigations of iconicity in language, whereby interactants coordinate meaningful bodily actions to create resemblances, are prevalent across the human communication sciences. However, when it comes to analysing and comparing iconicity across different interactions and modes of communication, it is not always clear we are looking at the same thing. For example, tokens of spoken ideophones and manual depicting actions may both be analysed as iconic forms. Yet spoken ideophones may signal depictive and descriptive qualities via speech, while manual actions may (...) signal depictive, descriptive, and indexical qualities via the shape, movement, and placement of the hands in space. Furthermore, each may co-occur with other semiotics articulated with the face, hands, and body within composite utterances. The paradigm of iconicity as a single property is too broad and coarse for comparative semiotics, as important details necessary for understanding the range of human communicative potentialities may be masked. Here, we draw on semiotic approaches to language and communication, including the model of language as signalled via describing, indicating and/or depicting and the notion of non-referential indexicality, to illustrate the multidimensionality of iconicity in co-present interactions. This builds on our earlier proposal for analysing how different methods of semiotic signalling are combined in multimodal language use. We discuss some implications for the language and communication sciences and explain how this approach may inform a theory of biosemiotics. (shrink)

The framework of depicting put forward byClark (2016)offers a schematic vantage point from which to examine iconic language use. Confronting the framework with empirical data, we consider some of its key theoretical notions. Crucially, by reconceptualizing the typology of depictions, we identify an overlooked domain in the literature: “speech-embedded nonverbal depictions,” namely cases where meaning is communicated iconically, nonverbally, and without simultaneously co-occurring speech. In addition to contextualizing the phenomenon in relation to existing research, we demonstrate, with examples from American (...) TV talk shows, how such depictions function in real-life language use, offering a brief sketch of their complexities and arguing also for their theoretical significance. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Iconicity is a fundamental property of spoken and signed languages. However, quantitative analysis of sound-meaning association in Chinese has not been extensively developed, and little is known about the impact of sound symbolism in children’s literature. As sound symbolism is supposed to be a universal cognitive phenomenon, this research seeks to investigate whether iconic structures of Mandarin are embodied in native Chinese speakers’ language experience. The paper describes a case study of Chinese storybooks with the goal of testing whether phonosemantic (...) association is prominent between name sounds and character features. A quantitative method was used to investigate the distribution of different phonological units in character denomination depending on their physical and emotional traits. The results show that phonemes and syllable combination patterns are closely related to perceivable character features. By comparing schematic mapping in Chinese with other languages, the study illuminates a cross-linguistic tendency in addition to a Chinese-specific iconic relation between sound and meaning. (shrink)

concepts cannot be directly perceived through senses. How do people represent abstract concepts in their minds? According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, people tend to rely on concrete experiences to understand abstract concepts. For instance, cognitive science has shown that time is a metaphorically constituted conception, understood relative to concepts like space. Across many languages, the “past” is associated with the “back” and the “future” is associated with the “front”. However, space-time mappings in people’s spoken metaphors are not always consistent (...) with the implicit mental metaphors they are using to conceptualize time in their minds, suggesting a dissociation between temporal language and temporal thought. Beyond the influences of language, the Temporal Focus Hypothesis proposes that people’s spatial conceptions of time are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. In general, people conceptualize the past as being in front to the extent that their culture is past-oriented, and the future as being in front to the extent that their culture is future-oriented. Recent lines of research have provided preliminary evidence that people’s implicit space-time mappings are malleable and likely result from multiple factors related to temporal focus, ranging from those relating to contextual features, such as cultural attitudes toward time, to those more tightly tied to the individual, such as age-related differences. By building upon and extending these findings, the overall aim of this thesis is to ascertain the generalizability of the Temporal Focus Hypothesis and further investigate the range of factors that may influence people’s spatializations of time, focusing specifically on previously unexplored within-cultural differences, political ideology, religion, real life experiences, pregnancy, temporal landmarks, circadian rhythms and chronotype, and personality. Together, these studies demonstrate that people’s implicit space-time mappings may vary according to their temporal focus, which can be explained by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. The findings of these studies also shed new light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis by extending the range of factors that may influence people’s conceptions of time, and reveal the malleability and flexibility of time representations. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 2 Seiten: 261-287.

Speakers frequently perform representational gestures to depict concepts in an iconic fashion. For example, a speaker may hold her index finger and thumb apart to indicate the size of a matchstick. However, the process by which a physical handshape is mentally transformed into abstract spatial information is not well understood. We present a series of experiments that investigate how people decode the physical form of an articulator to derive imaginary geometrical constructs, which we call “gesture form.” We provide quantitative evidence (...) for several key properties that play a role in this process. First, “profiling,” the ability to focus on a structural subunit within the complex form of the physical hand. Second, “perspective,” for which we show that one and the same handshape seen from different perspectives can lead to different spatial interpretations. Third, “selectivity,” the fact that gestures focus on specific spatial features at the expense of others. Our results provide a first step toward mapping out the process of how representational gestures make the communication of spatial information possible. (shrink)

TThis paper aims to evidence the inherently metonymic nature of co-speech gestures. Arguing that motivation in gesture involves iconicity (similarity), indexicality (contiguity), and habit (conventionality) to varying degrees, it demonstrates how a set of metonymic principles may lend a certain systematicity to experientially grounded processes of gestural abstraction and enaction. Introducing visuo-kinetic signs as an umbrella term for co-speech gestures and signed languages, the paper shows how a frame-based approach to gesture may integrate different cognitive/functional linguistic and semiotic accounts of (...) metonymy (e.g., experiential domains, frame metonymy, contiguity, and pragmatic inferencing). The guiding assumption is that gestures metonymically profile deeply embodied, routinized aspects of familiar scenes, that is, the motivating context of frames. The discussion shows how gestures may evoke frame structures exhibiting varying degrees of groundedness, complexity, and schematicity: basic physical action and object frames; more complex frames; and highly abstract, complex frame structures. It thereby provides gestural evidence for the idea that metonymy is more basic and more directly experientially grounded than metaphor and thus often feeds into correlated metaphoric processes. Furthermore, the paper offers some initial insights into how metonymy also seems to induce the emergence of schematic patterns in gesture which may result from action-based and discourse-driven processes of habituation and conventionalization. It exemplifies how these forces may engender grammaticalization of a basic physical action into a gestural marker that shows strong metonymic form reduction, decreased transitivity, and interacting pragmatic functions. Finally, addressing basic metonymic operations in signed lexemes elucidates certain similarities regarding sign constitution in gesture and sign. English and German multimodal discourse data as well as German Sign Language (DGS) are drawn upon to illustrate the theoretical points of the paper. Overall, this paper presents a unified account of metonymy’s role in underpinning forms, functions, and patterns in visuo-kinetic signs. (shrink)