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Topic: Iconicity

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	The Krasnow Institute: Abstracts
		Contrary to popular belief, iconicity is common in the languages of the world, and occurs at all levels of linguistic structure (e.g., syntax and morphology as well as lexicon); iconic linguistic items fit the phonotactic constraints of their languages.
		Iconicity, based as it is on conceptual mappings between form (phonology, syntax, etc.) and meaning (semantics), is a problem for these theories.
		The presence of iconicity in spoken and signed languages at all levels of structure is a strong argument for linguistic theories ("cognitivist"theories) that treat form and meaning in an integrated fashion.
	www.gmu.edu /departments/krasnow/abstracts_frames/abs97/taub9710.html (439 words)

	Dye ,Woll & Baker
		Iconicity can refer to the extent to which a non-signer can guess a sign's meaning (transparency) or to the extent to which a relationship between a sign and its referent is apparent to a non-signer (translucency).
		Iconicity may refer to the ease with which a sign's meaning can be guessed (transparency), the extent with which it can be associated with its referent (translucency) or the extent to which a sign was actually historically motivated.
		Iconic items were signs that looked like their referents; transparent productions represented a part or component of their referents (these would more usually be called hyponyms); and arbitrary productions bore no obvious relationship to their referents.
	www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de /Intersign/Workshop2/DyeWollBaker/DyeWollBaker.html (5438 words)

	Metaphor-Icon Link in Poetic Texts: A Cognitive Approach to Iconicity
		By contrast, this study attempts to clarify the interrelationship of metaphor and iconicity in the context of a cognitive theory of metaphor.
		Therefore, there are two types of iconic mappings in the input spaces: an attributive imagic mapping between the sensory perception and the image content, and an analogical diagrammatic mapping between the image content and the schematised images.
		Imagic and diagrammatic iconicity relate to (1) inside structure of input spaces in which sensory perception is projected onto the image content by imagic mapping, and then onto the image schema by diagrammatic mapping; and (2) the relationship of inputs to the generic spaces in which the diagrammatic mapping projects one space onto another.
	www.conknet.com /%7Emmagnus/SSArticles/hiraga/hiraga.html (7236 words)

	Iconicity
		Since the iconic ground is established on the basis of properties the two items possess only because of being what they are, the standard of comparison must be something like similarity or identity.
		When conceiving iconicity as engendering a "referential illusion" and as forming a stage in the generation of "figurative" meaning out of the abstract base structure, Greimas and Courtés (1979: 148, 177) similarly identify iconicity with perceptual appearance.
		In the case of more common iconical signs, however, like pictures and models, a conventional sign function must either be superimposed on the iconic ground, or the iconic ground must itself be characterised by further properties.
	www.arthist.lu.se /kultsem/encyclo/iconicity.html (1743 words)

	iconicity (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Iconicity comes to the fore most strongly in cases where speakers’ expressivity stands central, when their "creative energies" are at a peak, so to speak.
		Iconicity in pidgins and creoles is highlighted among others by Romaine (1988) and in examples given in Haiman (1980) and Todd (1984).
		Givón (1985, 1994) has written on iconic principles that play a role in language change, and Fischer (1994) shows, by means of a case study, how Givón's iconic principle of proximity may have functioned in a syntactic change in the history of English.
	home.hum.uva.nl /iconicity/conferences/1997/prospectus1997.html (1602 words)

	The ecological foundations of iconicity
		Contrary to the indexical ground, which is a relation, the iconic ground consists of a set of two classes of properties ascribed to two different things, which are taken to possess the properties in question independently, not only of the sign relation, but of each other.
		During the renewal of semiotic theory in the sixties and seventies, most semioticians were eager to abolish the notion of iconicity, often taking pictures as their favoured example, while claiming that pictures were, in some curious way, as conventional as linguistic signs.
		The problem then becomes how to account for the possibility of there being a primary iconicity, that is, a case in which it is iconicity itself that is the condition upon the discovery of the sign function, that which must be perceived for the sign relation to be known to exist (cf.
	www.arthist.lu.se /kultsem/sonesson/iconicity.html (1794 words)

	Iconicity in the ecology of semiosis
		Thus, icons in the religious sense are not particularly good instances of icons in the semiotical sense, for they are, as Uspenskij has shown, subject to several conventions determining the kind of perspective which may be employed, and the kind of things and persons which may be represented in different parts of the picture.
		There are supposed to be three kinds of hypo-icons: images, in which case the similarity between expression and content is one of “simple qualities”; diagrams, where the similarity is one of “analogous relations in their parts”; and metaphors, in which the relations of similarity are brought to an even further degree of mediation.
		That, of course, would be an iconical ground; an indexical ground, in a parallel fashion, would then be whatever it is that connects the properties of the weathercock as a physical thing to the direction in which the wind is blowing.
	www.arthist.lu.se /kultsem/sonesson/LifeworldIconicity1.html (1636 words)

	John Benjamins: Book set details for Iconicity in Language and Literature [Z IiLaL S]
		Special consideration is given to the iconic nature of metaphor and the ‘mise en abyme’, to iconically motivated punctuation and other typographic matters such as the manipulation of colour, fonts and spacing in advertising and in poetry.
		A more abstract, diagrammatic type of iconicity is again investigated, with reference to both language and literature: some essays focus on the device of reduplication, isomorphic tendencies in word formation and on creative iconic patterns in syntax, while others explore numerical design in Dante and geometrical patterning in Dylan Thomas.
		Many of the papers turn the notion of iconicity ‘inside-out’, some suggesting that ‘less-is-more’; others focus on the cognitive factors ‘inside’ the brain that are important for the iconic phenomena that are produced in the ‘outside’ world.
	www.benjamins.com /cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=Z_IiLaL_S (814 words)

	The ecological foundations of iconicity
		Conceived in strictly Peircean terms, iconicity is one of the three relationships in which a representamen (expression) may stand to its object (content or referent) and which may be taken as the ground for their forming a sign: more precisely, it is the first of these relationships,
		The term secondary iconicity designates an iconic relation between an expression and a content, which can only be perceived once the sign function, and a particular variety of it, is known to obtain; that is, our knowledge about the existence of a convention is a condition upon the discovery of the iconic ground.
		The problem then becomes how to account for the possibility of there being a primary iconicity, that is, a case in which it is iconicity itself that is the condition upon the discovery of the sign function, that which must be perceived for the sign relation to be known to exist.
	euphrates.wpunj.edu /faculty/yildizm/sp/w_abstract/EcologyIconicity.html (538 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		She sketches a three-step analogue-building model for the creation of linguistic iconic forms: the first step is the selection of a mental image that is associated with the original concept.
		Turning the tables on the traditional view of iconicity in language, Taub, along with quite a few others by now, suggests that “languages are as iconic as possible, given the constraints of their modality” (61).
		She combines the model for mapping iconic items and the cognitive model for mapping metaphors to produce what she describes as a “double-mapping.” There is the metaphorical mapping from a concrete to an abstract domain, and the iconic mapping from the concrete source domain to its linguistic form.
	www.ubs-translations.org /tictalk/tt55.doc (6225 words)

	VERBAL ICONICITY (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Thus, iconic structures become (in Richard Lanham's terminology) 'tacit persuasion patterns', which subtly influence the audience's understanding of the 'facts' with which they are confronted.
		Figures of iconicity seemed especially suited to the sacramental world-view of Christianity, and its early adherents became quite sensitive to the 'visibility' of their literature.
		Iconic language also figured in the style of occidental writers, such as St Augustine, (5) and thus we are not surprised to find it in the classical liturgies, both Catholic and Protestant, of Western Europe.
	praiseofglory.com /verbalicon.htm (3950 words)

	Iconicity, Hypoiconicity (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		This will involve showing how iconicity is nested within a complex structure of philosophical, as opposed to linguistic, concepts; how it relates to the structure of inference and Peirce's conception of cognition and scientific activity; finally, how it relates "organically" to, and is therefore inseparable from, the index and the symbol.
		Which is not to say that all such formal properties are readily discernible, for while the iconicity of the photograph in Plate 1 is, even though once removed, relatively conspicuous, the sort of iconicity involved in symbols is twice removed and is therefore not immediately evident and has to be sought for.
		The iconic and indexical constituents of verbal symbols have too often remained underestimated or even disregarded; on the other hand, the predominantly symbolic character of language and its consequent cardinal difference from the other, chiefly indexical or iconic, sets of signs likewise await due consideration in modern linguistic methodology.
	gala.univ-perp.fr /~tony/PDE.html (8127 words)

	Definition: Iconicity
		In this case we speak of ‘imagic’ iconicity (as in a portrait or in onomatopoeia, e.g.
		Recent literary criticism has confirmed that iconicity is also pervasive in the literary text, from its prosody and rhyme, its lineation, stanzaic ordering, its textual and narrative structure to its typographic layout on the page.
		Thus, the perception of iconic features in language and literature depends on an interpreter who is capable of connecting meaning with its formal expression.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /~haroldfs/dravling/indexical/icondef.html (564 words)

	Markedness and Iconicity: Some Questions
		Several authors in recent decades have approached the topic of iconicity in language quite generally, and have included markedness in their discussion (Haiman 1980, Matthews 1972, 1991).
		He goes further in relating markedness to iconicity than other works I am aware of, but is slow to claim universal applicability.
		As an original contribution of this paper, I would like to call attention to a troublesome example from one language in which there is an incongruity in the picture associated with what seems to be a well-established tendency, that of plural to be marked and "singular" to be unmarked.
	www2.hawaii.edu /~bender/icon.html (2687 words)

	HLW: Word Forms: Units: Iconicity
		When a form is iconic, the implication is not that a person with no knowledge of the language could predict the form given the meaning; the form is still a convention.
		The iconicity is often not based on the imitation of a sound from nature but may relate more to how the position or the movement of the organs of speech directly corresponds to something in nature.
		In sum, iconicity makes sense since it facilitates memory for the association between form and meaning, so it should not surprise us that language will capitalize on iconicity when this is possible.
	www.indiana.edu /~hlw/PhonUnits/iconicity.html (1444 words)

	AS/SA No 10, Article 1 : Annalisa BAICCHI, "Iconicity and Indexicality: A Perceptual Approach to Language"
		Iconicity in poetry is realized by means of rhyme and prosody, stanzaic ordering and typographic layout on the page.
		There is an interplay of iconicity and indexicality within the sonnet which ensnare the ear of the reader and leads him toward the chosen interpretation.
		We may say that in these cases iconicity and indexicality are semantically motivated and their perception is directly proportional to the interpretative ability of the reader who connects meaning with form.
	www.chass.utoronto.ca /french/as-sa/ASSA-No10/No10-A1.html (2106 words)

	Greenwood Publishing Group I1 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The premise of iconicity is that in dramatic performance actors use the same neural architecture that people use in their daily lives to execute events.
		The process of iconicity draws on the actor's use of this mental capacity.
		This initial exploraton of iconicity sometimes refers to practice; however, the ideas presented in the first part of the book largely provide a foundation for the second part, which is more practically oriented.
	info.greenwood.com /books/0313309/0313309388.html (439 words)

	LINGUIST List 4.20: Iconicity and Functionalism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Briefly, Newmeyer distinguishes three basic claims in iconicity research: (i) grammatical structure is an iconic reflection of conceptual structure; (ii) iconic principles govern speakers' choices of structurally available options in discourse; and (iii) structural options that reflect discourse-iconic principles become grammaticalized.
		The reason why functionalists consider iconicity so important is that it is an extremely general extragrammatical principle which accounts for a wide variety of facts and achieves a higher level of explanatory adequacy than purely grammatical principles.
		Of course, "performance iconicity" is irrelevant to generative grammar, but the reverse of this, the fact that generative grammar is also irrelevant to a lot of performance questions, is not a point in favor of it.
	www.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de /linguist/issues/4/4-20.html (412 words)

	“Look at All Those Nouns in a Row”--Authoritarianism, Democracy and
		If iconicity can exert an effect independent of institutional transformation, during at least some democratic transitions iconicity should begin to change in the speech even of leaders who, never seeking election to office, lack any institutional incentive to seek identification with the general public.
		In sum, iconic distance relative to local vernaculars should be greatest in the speech of authoritarian rulers, intermediate in the speech of transition leaders, and least in the speech of electoral politicians.
		From this perspective, both speech that is iconically distancing and ordinary speech serve the same purpose of legimating rule: the difference lies in whether institutions or persons are legitimated.
	www.sscnet.ucla.edu /polisci/faculty/anderson/iclkrev.htm (7068 words)

	Sherman Wilcox - Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		For many years iconicity in signed languages was regarded as a feature which detracted from their status as fully developed human languages.
		In a series of studies I have been developing a model of iconicity based on cognitive linguistics which recognizes its pervasiveness both in the lexicon and the grammar.
		According to this model, iconicity is a property of the geometry of conceptual spaces in which both phonological and semantic structures reside: iconicity is a characteristic of this situations in which the phonological pole of a symbolic unit resides in close proximity in conceptual space to the semantic pole.
	www.unm.edu /~wilcox/research/pubs.html (451 words)

	[No title]
		Iconicity Versus Arbitrariness According to Klima and Bellugi (1979:202), the opposite of arbitrary is iconicity.
		Iconicity in this case may be how closely the source signs are related to their respective compounds as to the form or meaning of the compounds.
		For example, in analyzing the following compounds, iconicity is how apparent the relationship is between the two parts of the compound and the actual meaning of the compound.
	www.geocities.com /rebaorton/qualify.htm (3586 words)

	Iconicity in Language (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Its strongest proponents, however, argue that it is an issue which lies at the very heart of what it means to be an articulate animal, at the heart of what distinguishes human language from the forms of communication available to other life forms.
		These people would say that the arbitrary vs. the iconic distinction is the linguistic counterpart of the essential vs. non-essential attributes of Aristotle or the analytic vs. synthetic expressions of Kant, not to mention similar fundamental distinctions drawn by Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and even in quantum electrodynamics.
		We have chosen Charles Sanders Peirce's term 'icon' to express the notion of non-arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, because it is the term most commonly used to refer to linguistic non-arbitrariness.
	www.trismegistos.com /IconicityInLanguage/formalities.html (868 words)

	University of Manitoba: Canadian Literature Archive - Publications - The Virtual Book - Ian Adam - Iconicity (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		It is arbitrary/symbolic (we have to translate the shades of light and dark into colours), it is iconic/ representational (in its images), and it is indexial (pointing to originals).
		Prairie literary narrative copes with iconicity in ways made particular and problematic by historical and geographic positions: this is especially seen in relation to cultural icons.
		Butala's variant on this iconicity lies in her polarizing two kinds of transience: that of the past of the village and the land, and that of the author's personal past in an urban world.
	www.umanitoba.ca /canlit/conference/ian_adam.shtml (3980 words)

	Essaydirect.com: Iconicity within the GUI of Microsoft Office and the online-help of Microsoft Office - Term Paper ...
		I will show that the iconicity underlying the linguistic information in the online-help is helpful in order to understand the text more easily.
		Iconicity is a phenomenon that seems to be omnipresent in language and can be discovered in many fields of our everyday life.
		Iconicity belongs to the linguistic field of semiotics, which is "the study of signs and their use, focusing on the mechanism and patterns of human communication and on the nature and acquisition of knowledge" (Crystal 1992:384).
	www.essaydirect.com /preview/22165.html (830 words)

	Untitled Document
		The problem is that the more visible nature of the iconicity of sign language has led people to draw the erroneous conclusion that signed languages are not "real" languages, and that's why we strive to show that signed languages aren't iconic in the way that many people have assumed.
		The obvious iconicity of the ASL word for 'house' is only obvious in a culture where houses are prototypically shaped like rectangles with pitched roofs.
		Thus, things which start out as very iconic become less so for successive generations of signers, making signs as arbitrary in many cases for their users as spoken words are for speakers of languages such as English.
	www.unc.edu /~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/signed_languages.html (3147 words)

	Tony Jappy, research and teaching
		It is well known that during the twentieth century the human sciences have come under the scrutiny of at least two major semiotic theories: European structuralism, which developed from Saussure's conception of la langue, and Peirce's semiotics.
		Iconicity theory is the modern name for what Peirce called his "logic of icons", a logic which investigates various ways in which the formal, qualitative characters of the signs we humans use, including photographs, paintings, traffic signals and...
		This has implications not only for the study of language, in particular the relation between the complexity of language signs and the existential and relatively simple medium in which they are communicated, but also for the way we see the relation between language and other semiotic systems.
	gala.univ-perp.fr /~tony/temp001~.htm (1394 words)

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