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Language from the Body: Iconicity and Metaphor in American Sign Language
Abstract
What is the role of meaning in linguistic theory? Generative linguists have severely limited the influence of meaning, claiming that language is not affected by other cognitive processes and that semantics does not influence linguistic form. Conversely, cognitivist and functionalist linguists believe that meaning pervades and motivates all levels of linguistic structure. This dispute can be resolved conclusively by evidence from signed languages. Signed languages are full of iconic linguistic items: words, inflections, and even syntactic constructions with structural similarities between their physical form and their referents' form. Iconic items can have concrete meanings and also abstract meanings through conceptual metaphors. Language from the Body rebuts the generativist linguistic theories which separate form and meaning and asserts that iconicity can only be described in a cognitivist framework where meaning can influence form.
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Cited by
Teaching American Sign Language to Hearing Adult Learners
Quinto-Pozos, D. (2011) · Annual Review of Applied Linguistics · doi:10.1017/s0267190511000195 · Cited by 133
Iconicity and Sign Lexical Acquisition: A Review
Ortega, G. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01280 · Cited by 123
The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning
Nygaard, L. C., Herold, D. S., & Namy, L. L. (2009) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2008.01007.x · Cited by 104
Iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols
Perlman, M., Dale, R., & Lupyan, G. (2015) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.150152 · Cited by 99
Metadata
- Authors
- Taub, S. F.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2001-02-26
- OpenAlex
- W4247720119
- Cited by
- 504
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 17.14
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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