The Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-284948-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 1096 Seiten, Format (B × H): 183 mm x 251 mm, Gewicht: 2020 g

The Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language offers a comprehensive guide to the role that iconicity - resemblance between form and meaning - plays in all modes of languages, on all levels of language, and in all aspects of language. The originally semiotic notion of iconicity has gained widespread attention beyond the field of linguistics; this volume thus brings together research exploring a wide range of topics in iconicity from different perspectives. It explores the history of iconicity and its place in linguistic theory, in particular how the idea of iconicity has developed over time and how it has recently begun to once again influence thinking and theorizing about language. By presenting a very broad spectrum of iconicity, the chapters provide greater recognition of its influence and present a clearer picture of its scope across the languages of the world. They also offer a critical discussion of the notion of iconicity, as its parameters, dimensions, and operationalizations are not always easy to define. The volume will appeal to linguists of all theoretical persuasions, but also to a wider audience outside linguistics proper, including researchers and students in the fields of literature, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Fischer, Olga

Akita, Kimi

Perniss, Pamela

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1: Olga Fischer, Pamela Perniss, and Kimi Akita: Introduction: Iconicity as a general principle underlying language and language behavior

- Part I. Foundational issues in iconicity

- 2: Luca Nobile: Iconicity in classical philosophy: A legacy of prehistoric orality

- 3: Winfried Nöth: Peirce on icons and iconicity

- 4: John E. Joseph: Saussure and iconicity: The ghost in the machine?

- 5: Hendrik De Smet: nalogy and iconicity

- 6: Sonia Cristofaro: Iconicity in language typology

- 7: Ludovic De Cuypere: The explanatory power of iconicity in language

- 8: Thomas Berg: Frequency, variation, and iconicity

- Part II. Iconicity in linguistic theorizing

- 9: Diego Gabriel Krivochen and L'udmila Lacková Bennett: Iconicity and generative grammar

- 10: Elzbieta Muskat-Tabakowska: Iconicity in cognitive and functional linguistics

- 11: Bodo Winter, Greg Woodin, and Marcus Perlman: Defining iconicity for the cognitive sciences

- 12: Vincent M. Colapietro: Embodied mind

- Part III. (Morpho)phonology

- 13: Marcus Perlman: Iconic prosody and its connection to iconic gesture

- 14: David M. Sidhu: Experimental approaches to sound symbolism

- 15: Niklas Erben Johansson: Cross-linguistic vocal iconicity

- 16: Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano: The segmentals and suprasegmentals of ideophones

- 17: Oksana Tkachman: Iconicity in formational properties of signs in sign languages

- Part IV. Iconicity in writing systems

- 18: Dimitrios Meletis: Phonographic writing systems

- 19: Xinxin Zhao: Logographic writing systems and Chinese characters

- 20: Sybille Krämer: Notational iconicity

- Part V. Morphosyntax

- 21: Wolfgang U. Dressler and Marianne Kilani-Schoch: Iconicity in word formation

- 22: Thomas Schwaiger: Reduplication in spoken and signed language

- 23: Lívia Körtvélyessy: Iconicity in diminutives and augmentatives

- 24: Carl Börstell: Iconic plurality across modalities

- 25: Isabeau De Smet and Freek Van de Velde: Iconicity in verbal formation

- 26: Klaas Willems: Principles of diagrammatic iconicity in language

- 27: Stela Manova: The iconicity of affix order

- 28: Anita Slonimska: Iconicity in simultaneous constructions in sign languages

- Part VI. Lexis and semantics

- 29: Janis B. Nuckolls: The enactive iconicity of ideophone semantics

- 30: Anatoly Liberman: Etymology and folk etymology

- 31: Silva H. Ladewig: Degrees of iconicity in gestures: From richness to schematicity

- 32: Michal Szawerna and Neil Cohn: Iconicity in the visual lexicons of comics

- Part VII. Discourse

- 33: James H.-Y. Tai: Iconic sequencing in spoken and signed language

- 34: Yanna Popova: Iconic and non-iconic aspects of storytelling: Narrative fiction, temporality, and memory

- 35: Lindsay Ferrara: Iconicity in signed narratives

- Part VIII. Iconicity and language learning/ language development

- 36: Catherine Laing and Beyza Sümer: Iconic bootstrapping for language development: One size does not fit all

- 37: Gerardo Ortega, Yukari Hirata, and Spencer Kelly: Iconicity in L2 learning

- 38: Peter Bakker: Iconicity in pidgins and creoles

- 39: Lotte Meteyard: Effects of iconicity in populations with speech, language, and communication needs

- Part IX. Iconicity and language processing

- 40: Robin L. Thompson and Corrine Occhino: Iconicity in sign language processing: Lexical effects in comprehension and production

- 41: Bonnie McLean and Yasamin Motamedi: A robustness approach to operationalizations of iconicity

- 42: Arash Aryani: Iconicity in the mind: Unravelling the cognitive and neural pathways linking sound and meaning

- Part X. Iconicity and language evolution and emergence

- 43: Nicolas Fay and Bradley Walker: Sign iconicity and its contribution to gesture-first theories of language origin

- 44: Christine Cuskley and Kees Sommer: The evolution of linguistic iconicity and the cross-modal cognitive suite

- 45: Bencie Woll: Iconicity, multi-modality, and language evolution

- 46: Maria Flaksman: De-iconization and (re)-iconization: Diachronic aspects of lexical iconicity in spoken languages

- 47: William J. Herlofsky: De-iconization and re-iconization in signed languages: The case of Japanese sign language

- 48: Loïs Dona and Marieke Schouwstra: Iconicity in the evolution of language: Computational models and laboratory experiments

- 49: Brian D. Joseph: Language contact and iconicity

- Part XI. Applications of iconicity

- 50: Federico Gobbo: Iconicity in invented languages

- 51: Christina Ljungberg: Iconicity in literature

- 52: John Haiman: The aesthetic motivation of icons: 'We first love things when first we see them painted'

- 53: Imogen Cohen and Eric Metz: Translation of iconicity: Iconicity of translation

Über Autor(innen)

Olga Fischer is Professor Emerita of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Morphosyntactic Change: Functional and Formal Perspectives (OUP 2007), co-author of A Brief History of English Syntax (CUP 2017), founder and co-editor of the Iconicity in Language and Literature series (Benjamins 1999-present), and chief editor of Folia Linguistica (2016-2023). She has edited volumes on grammaticalization and syntactic change (Benjamins 2000, 2004), and has published widely in these areas in academic journals such as Journal of Linguistics, Diachronica, Transactions of the Philological Society, and Studies in Language.

Kimi Akita is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Nagoya University. His research interests include ideophones, sound symbolism, and linguistic typology. He has published in major journals, including Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Journal of Linguistics. He is the co-editor of Iconicity: East Meets West (Benjamins 2015), The Grammar of Japanese Mimetics: Perspectives from Structure, Acquisition, and Translation (Routledge 2017), and Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives (Benjamins 2019).

Pamela Perniss is Professor in the Faculty of Human Sciences and Chair of the Sign Language Interpreting (DGS-German) program at the University of Cologne. Her research takes a multimodal approach to language and focuses in particular on the role of iconicity in the visual modality in shaping language structure and processing. She has co-edited volumes and special issues related to the study of iconicity, including in the series Iconicity in Language and Literature (Benjamins 2020) and in Language and Cognition (CUP 2020). She is General Editor of Sign Language & Linguistics and Associate Editor of Cognitive Science.