Meaning on the one and on the other hand

Adam, Meike; Iversen, Wiebke; Willkinson, Erin; Morford, Jill P.

doi:10.1075/ill.5.19ada

Cited by 4 publications

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An approach to path movement in the diachronic study of sign languages

Napoli,

Sanders

2024

DIA

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Sign languages seem not to be amenable to traditional historical reconstruction via the comparative method, making it difficult to replicate the successes achieved in the diachronic study of spoken languages. We propose to alleviate this difficulty with an alternative approach that draws upon nonarbitrariness and biomechanics, especially the drive for reducing articulatory effort. We offer a demonstration of this approach, which can add confirmation to known relationships between sign languages and new evidence in support of suspected relationships, helping to fill in a methodological gap in the diachronic study of sign languages.

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An approach to path movement in the diachronic study of sign languages

Napoli,

Sanders

2024

DIA

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The distribution of handshapes in the established lexicon of Israeli Sign Language (ISL)

Fuks

2021

Semiotica

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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 (that varied in degree of iconicity), which are specified for one of the handshapes in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). 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.

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Iconicity as a General Property of Language: Evidence from Spoken and Signed Languages

Perniss¹,

Thompson²,

Vigliocco³

2010

Front. Psychology

526

398

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Current views about language are dominated by the idea of arbitrary connections between linguistic form and meaning. However, if we look beyond the more familiar Indo-European languages and also include both spoken and signed language modalities, we find that motivated, iconic form-meaning mappings are, in fact, pervasive in language. In this paper, we review the different types of iconic mappings that characterize languages in both modalities, including the predominantly visually iconic mappings found in signed languages. Having shown that iconic mapping are present across languages, we then proceed to review evidence showing that language users (signers and speakers) exploit iconicity in language processing and language acquisition. While not discounting the presence and importance of arbitrariness in language, we put forward the idea that iconicity need also be recognized as a general property of language, which may serve the function of reducing the gap between linguistic form and conceptual representation to allow the language system to “hook up” to motor, perceptual, and affective experience.

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Meaning on the one and on the other hand

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

An approach to path movement in the diachronic study of sign languages

An approach to path movement in the diachronic study of sign languages

The distribution of handshapes in the established lexicon of Israeli Sign Language (ISL)

Iconicity as a General Property of Language: Evidence from Spoken and Signed Languages

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