The Iconicity of Grammar: Isomorphism and Motivation

Haiman, John

doi:10.2307/414448

Cited by 497 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…As Haiman (1980Haiman ( , 1983Haiman ( , 1985 has shown, diagrammatic iconicity often also reflects externally motivated states, such as temporal organization of events being represented in a linear representation of clauses. In other words, both imagistic and diagrammatic iconicity can be externally motivated.…”

Section: Language-internal Versus Language-external Mappingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Winter

Bergen

2012

Lang Cognition

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Abstract. While the arbitrariness of the sign has occupied a central space in linguistic theory for a century, counter-evidence to this basic tenet has been mounting. Recent findings from cross-linguistic studies on spoken languages have suggested that, contrary to purely arbitrary distributions of phonological content, languages often exhibit systematic and regular phonological and sub-phonological patterns of form-meaning mappings. To date, studies of distributional tendencies of this kind have not been conducted for signed languages.In an investigation of phoneme distribution in American Sign Language (ASL) and Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras), tokens of the claw-5 handshape were extracted and analyzed for whether the handshape contributed to the overall meaning of the sign. The data suggests that distribution of the claw-5 handshape is not randomly distributed across the lexicon, but clusters around six formmeaning patterns: convex-concave, Unitary-elements, non-compact matter, hand-as-hand, touch, and interlocking. Interestingly, feature-level motivations were uncovered as the source of the mappings These findings are considered within a new cognitive framework to better understand how and why sub-morphemic units develop and maintain motivated form-meaning mappings. The model proposed here, Embodied Cognitive Phonology, builds on cognitive and usage-based approaches but incorporates theories of embodiment to address the source of the claw-5 mappings. Embodied Cognitive Phonology provides a unifying framework for understanding the perceived differences in phonological patterning and organization across the modalities. Both language-internal and languageexternal sources of motivation contribute to the emergence of form-meaning mappings. Arbitrariness is argued to be but one possible outcome from the process of emergence and schematization of phonological content, and exists alongside motivation as a legitimate state of linguistic units of all sizes of complexity. Importantly, because language is dynamic, these states are not fixed, but are in continuous flux, as language users reinvent and reinterpret form and meaning over time.

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Section: Language-internal Versus Language-external Mappingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Winter

Bergen

2012

Lang Cognition

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“…Előbb azonban vessünk egy pillantást arra, hogy egy több kiadást megért és egy új, kísérleti tankönyvcsalád hogyan integrálja a pragmatikát a tananyagába. 1980-1981Kiefer 2000: 38;Tátrai 2011: 68-99), hanem az, hogy az egyik az írott, míg a másik a szóbeli nyelvhasználat egysége. Mivel a tankönyv szerzői azt is állítják, hogy a szöveg nem a nyelv, hanem a beszéd része (l. a saussure-i langue-parole oppozíciót), elmosódhat a különbség a magában álló mondat és a szövegmondat (vagy megnyilatkozás) között.…”

Section: Bevezetésunclassified

„Média-szöveg-értés”. Újmédia az anyanyelvtanításban

Boronkai¹

2017

Anyanyelv-pedagógia

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“…Este principio es reinterpretado como un "efecto reductor" o chunking en Bybee (2006), al relacionarlo expresamente con la automatización derivada de la frecuencia de uso. Por otra parte, concurriría un , que tendría por objetivo facilitar el procesamiento al receptor (Haspelmath, íbid) y que estaría incluido desde un punto de vista más general en una tendencia a la "iconicidad" con respecto al significado en las perspectivas de muchos otros autores: Haiman (1980), Waugh (1994), Croft (2012)… En Kirby et al (2015) este principio aparece identificado como una tendencia a la "expresividad", derivada de las necesidades comunicativas, en oposición a una supuesta tendencia a la "compresión" vinculada a la optimización del código para su adquisición a partir del uso (iterated learning), es decir, a su composicionalidad. Esto último, por tanto, podría considerarse apropiadamente un tercer polo o macrotendencia, ya que, según exponen, la compresibilidad derivada de la composicionalidad del sistema puede actuar en sentido contrario a la compresibilidad de clac 68/2016, 192-252 pérez: lexicón 216 la propia señal, de modo que, por ejemplo, en castellano una hipotética forma *haceremos sería más regular que haremos, contribuyendo a un código más "comprimido" y fácil de aprender y generar, aunque sería una forma menos 'económica' en el sentido tradicional, es decir, en la dinámica propia de los procesos comunicativos.…”

Section: Motivaciones Evolutivas De La Expresión Escritaunclassified

El lexicón como origen del carácter dinámico de los sistemas de escritura

Rodríguez

2016

CLAC

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The lexicon as origin of the dynamic nature of writing systems. Within the framework of current linguistics it seems now possible to regard written language as a dynamic adaptive system which would be shaped in the mental lexicon of users from the experiences of the linguistic usage. Despite that, planning of variation and artificial selection seem to play a major role in written expression evolutionary dynamics because of the stronger linkage of writing to formal contexts. In this author's proposal for a theoretical model, those actions would be functionally linked to usage by means of inherent value linguistic attitudes generated during the processes of reading and writing, so that they don't invalidate the adaptive nature of the system. Various functional motivations, ultimately dependent on the sociocultural and environmental context, would occasionally affect the lexicon organization; and the lexicon would reciprocate by spontaneously approaching and distancing the involved linguistic units in order to adapt to the adjustments. Those shifts, in turn, would be founded on eight possible basic movements and countermovements of graphical extension and retraction which are described in this work. They allow to locally modifying the system's relational architecture, so that the written expressions can adapt. Adaptation, in any case, would be modulated by the sedimentation achieved by the functional trends in their social environment, in procedures that can be regarded as niche construction processes.

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The Iconicity of Grammar: Isomorphism and Motivation

Cited by 497 publications

References 30 publications

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

„Média-szöveg-értés”. Újmédia az anyanyelvtanításban

El lexicón como origen del carácter dinámico de los sistemas de escritura

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