title: 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 this paper, we 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 evolution, development and processing. In language evolution, iconicity might have played a key role in establishing displacement (the ability of language to refer beyond what is immediately present), which is core to what language does; in ontogenesis, 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. Finally, 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.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences Department, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, UK Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, 49 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, UK p.perniss@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Perniss
authors.affiliation: Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences Department, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, UK Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, 49 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, UK.
authors.forename: Gabriella
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vigliocco
mesh_terms: D003468:Cultural Evolution; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D012660:Semantics; D013561:Symbolism; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: co-speech gesture; iconicity; language development; language evolution; language processing; sign language
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