The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 35 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries
Abstract
This paper argues that three widely accepted motivating factors subsumed under the broad heading of iconicity, namely iconicity of quantity, iconicity of complexity and iconicity of cohesion, in fact have no role in explaining grammatical asymmetries and should be discarded. The iconicity accounts of the relevant phenomena have been proposed by authorities like Jakobson, Haiman and Givón, but I argue that these linguists did not sufficiently consider alternative usage-based explanations in terms of frequency of use. A closer look shows that the well-known Zipfian effects of frequency of use (leading to shortness and fusion) can be made responsible for all of the alleged iconicity effects, and initial corpus data for a range of phenomena confirm the correctness of the approach.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003) · University of Chicago Press eBooks · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001 · Cited by 20,632
Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements
Greenberg, J. H. (1963) · Americanae (AECID Library) · Cited by 3,065
Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature
Levinson, S. C. (2000) · Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics · Cited by 2,279
Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure
(2001) · Typological Studies in Language · doi:10.1075/tsl.45 · Cited by 2,230
A COURSE IN MODERN LINGUISTICS
Hockett, C. F. (1958) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1958.tb00870.x · Cited by 2,080
Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction
Heath, J., Givón, T., & Givon, T. (1992) · Language · doi:10.2307/416859 · Cited by 1,941
Greenberg, J. H., Ferguson, C. A., & Moravcsik, E. A. (1978) · Cited by 1,824
Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars
Hawkins, J. A. (2004) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252695.001.0001 · Cited by 1,743
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics
Comrie, B., Asher, R. E., & Simpson, J. M. Y. (1995) · Language · doi:10.2307/415969 · Cited by 1,435
Language Universals and Linguistic Typology
Comrie, B. (1981) · Americanae (AECID Library) · Cited by 1,388
Cited by
The architecture of grammar and the division of labor in exponence
Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2012) · The Morphology and Phonology of Exponence · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573721.003.0002 · Cited by 269
The length of words reflects their conceptual complexity
Lewis, M. L., & Frank, M. C. (2016) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.003 · Cited by 153
Metadata
- Authors
- Haspelmath, M.
- Venue
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2008-01-01
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-33
- ISSN
- 0936-5907 (ISSN-L)
- 1613-3641
- OpenAlex
- W2084082059
- Cited by
- 586
- References
- 35
- FWCI
- 223.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1515/cog.2008.001
- The paper
- Haspelmath, M. (2008). Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog.2008.001
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
