The bridge of iconicity: from a world of experience to the experience of language

Abstract

Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant phenomenon for our understanding of language processing, development, and evolution. Rather, the arbitrary and symbolic nature of language has long been taken as a design feature of the human linguistic system. In the talk, I will propose an alternative framework in which iconicity in face-to-face communication (spoken and signed) is a powerful vehicle for bridging between language and human sensori- motor experience, and, as such, iconicity provides a key to understanding language development, and processing. In development, iconicity might play a critical role in supporting referentiality (learning to map linguistic labels to objects, events etc. in the world), which is core to vocabulary development. In language processing, iconicity could provide a mechanism to account for how language comes to be embodied (grounded in our sensory and motor systems), which is core to meaningful communication.