Iconicity and generative grammar

Abstract

A theme running through much of the functionalist literature in linguistics is that grammatical structure, to a considerable degree, has an 'iconic' motivation. This theme can be distilled into three rather distinct claims: (1) iconic principles govern speakers' choices of structurally available options in discourse; (2) structural options that reflect discourse-iconic principles become grammaticalized; (3) grammatical structure is an iconic reflection of conceptual structure. After presenting numerous examples from the functionalist literature in support of the idea that iconicity is widespread in language, I argue that claim (1) is irrelevant to generative grammar; claim (2), if correct, poses no challenge to generative grammar, despite a widespread belief to the contrary; and claim (3) has literally been built into standard versions of generative grammar. I go on to discuss the implications of iconic relations in language for the autonomy hypothesis and, at a more speculative level, for the evolution of language.

Ideophones and reduplication

“…Although speech always allows some degree of prosodic flexibility and no two tokens of words are ever produced in exactly the same way, the degree of expressive freedom shown by ideophones across languages appears to be of a different order altogether . Siwu is not alone in granting the ideophone this kind of expressive freedom; similar findings have been reported for ideophones -but not ordinary words -in Ewe (Ameka 2001), Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1979), Japanese (Akita 2009), Cha'palaa (Floyd 2012), and Quechua (Nuckolls 1996), among many others. That this difference shows up in the same way across unrelated languages is evidence for the generality of the analysis presented here: recognising two distinct modes of representation helps account for a range of cross-linguistic facts about reduplication and ideophones.…”

“…All of these aspects are available in principle as affordances for iconic mappings. For instance, syllable shapes, vowel length, vowel quality, reduplication, and intonation contours can represent aspectual meanings like event closure, duration, irregularity, iterativity, and telicity -cross-linguistically recurring iconic mappings in ideophones that have been explored in considerable detail by various authors (Westermann 1927;Nuckolls 1996;Hamano 1998;Dingemanse 2012).…”

“…The notion of foregrounding has its origins in the structural linguistics of the Prague School, where Havránek defined it as "the use of the devices of language in such a way that this use itself attracts attention" (Havránek 1964: 10). Foregrounding can be achieved by a range of means, from lexical choice to prosody, and it may be used for various ends, from achieving poetic effect (Jakobson 1960) to indicating noteworthiness (Gussenhoven 2004) to signalling a performance (Nuckolls 1996). In all cases, it achieves its effect by virtue of its noticeable difference from what Havránek called the "automatised" language of ordinary sentences.…”

“…It has long been known that ideophones are a common locus of foregrounding in language use: across languages, people tend to produce them as performances, setting them off from the rest of the utterance by intonational breaks and pitch excursions (Kunene 1965;Childs 1994;Nuckolls 1996). This kind of prosodic foregrounding is one of the cues that make ideophones stand out as noticeably different: framed as depictions amidst otherwise descriptive material.…”

“…Let me bring the argument full circle by returning to the repeated ideophone of one of the first examples, shown below as (13). The repeated talk is set off from the rest by means of a brief pause and intonational foregrounding: hallmarks of depiction (Nuckolls 1996). The utterance, taken from a story told in conversation, features a repeated ideophone kpɔ 'sound of impact' to depict the act of pounding for food preparation.…”