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1. Introduction
"the intuition behind iconicity is that the structure of language reflects in
some way the structure of experience" Croft's (2003:102)
"The traditional view of language is that most relationships between linguistic units and
the corresponding meanings are arbitrary... But the cognitive claim is that the degree of
iconicity in language is much higher than has traditionally been thought to be the case."
(Lee 2001:...)
2. Iconicity of quantity
2.1. Advocates and examples
Any efficient sign system in which costs correlate with signal length will
follow the following economy principle:
(well known at least since Horn's (1921) and Zipf's (1935) work)
3
3. Iconicity of complexity
3.1. Advocates and examples
some quotations from the literature that describe this principle and refer to it as "isomorphic"
or "iconic":
These universal formal asymmetries have been known since Greenberg (1966)
(who did not invoke iconicty to explain them!)
Simpler explanation:
Spontaneous verb meanings tend to occur more frequently as inchoatives;
agent-caused verb meanings occur more frequently as causatives. Due to
economic motivation, the rarer elements tend to be overtly coded.
Comrie 1989:128: "...the most natural kind of transitive construction is one where
the A[gent] is high in animacy and definiteness and the P[atient] is lower in
animacy and definiteness; and any deviation from this pattern leads to a more
marked construction."
"markedness subhierarchy":
*OBJ/HUM >> * OBJ/ANIM >> *OBJ/INAN
*OBJ/HUM & *ØC >> * OBJ/ANIM & *ØC >> *OBJ/INAN & *ØC
ASE ASE ASE
Simpler explanation:
Inanimate NPs occur more frequently as objects; animate NPs occur more
frequently as subjects. Due to economic motivation, the rarer elements tend
to be overtly coded.
4. Iconicity of cohesion
4.1. Advocates and examples
(11) Meanings that belong together more closely are expressed by more
cohesive forms
(14) Buru (Austronesian; Indonesia; Grimes 1991:211, cit. after Dixon 2000:69)
a. Da puna ringe gosa.
3SG.A cause 3SG.O be.good
'He (did something which, indirectly,) made her well.'
b. Da pe-gosa ringe.
3SG.A CAUS-be.good 3SG.O
'He healed her (directly, with spiritual power
(16) Georgian
a. gveli da k'ac'i 'the snake and the man'
snake and man
b. da-dzma 'brother and sister'
brother-sister
8
(18) X Y X-Y Z
comparatives more arid dri-er worse
past tense play-ed went
negation doesn't see has-n't won't
gender lady doctor actr-ess nun
diminutive young elephant pig-let puppy
Explanation:
• The items that show greater formal cohesion are simply more frequent.
• High frequency is known to be a favorable environment for
– phonological fusion (e.g. hasn't vs. *knowsn't)
– preservation of older patterns (e.g. actress vs. *protectress)
– preservation/creation of suppletion (see Osthoff 1899, Ronneberger-Sibold 1988)
unpossessed possessed
Gärtner 'gardener' 24 0
alienab
Jäger 'hunter' 48 2
Pfarrer 'priest' 12 0
le
Schwester 'sister' 32 58
inalien
Tante 'aunt' 47 22
able
Tochter 'daughter' 46 53
Table 1
• But the extra element may also occur to the left or right of both the
possessor and the possessum:
Dixon (2000): more semantic contrasts that are associated with longer/shorter
markers:
(23) longer marker shorter marker
action state
transitive intransitive
causee having control causee lacking control
causee unwilling causee willing
causee fully affected causee partially affected
accidental intentional
with effort naturally
Not all of these can be subsumed under "less conceptual distance", but they
can be plausibly related to frequency asymmetries.
Givón 1990: 560: “the degree of finiteness is an iconic expression of the degree
of integration of the main and complement events”
"Given a hierarchy of degree of finiteness (or its converse, degree of nominality) of verb forms found in
a language, the more integrated the two events are,
(i) the more noun-like is the complement verb likely to be, and
(ii) the less finite verbal morphology – such as tense-aspect-modality and pronominal agreement –
is the verb likely to display." (1990:561)
Cristofaro 2003: "At this stage, an iconic effect is obtained: states of affairs which are semantically
integrated, or conceptually close, are coded by morphosyntactically integrated structures."
5. Conclusion
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