Editing Sign language (section)

=== Iconicity ===
[[Iconicity]] is similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to [[Arbitrariness#Linguistics|arbitrariness]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bross|first1=F. |year=2024 |title=What is iconicity? |journal=Sign Language & Linguistics |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=73–102 |doi=10.1075/sll.22003.bro |url=https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/008405|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The first studies on iconicity in ASL were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Many early sign language linguists rejected the notion that iconicity was an important aspect of sign languages, considering most perceived iconicity to be extralinguistic.<ref name=":2"/><ref name=klima/> However, mimetic aspects of sign language (signs that imitate, mimic, or represent) are found in abundance across a wide variety of sign languages. For example, when deaf children learning sign language try to express something but do not know the associated sign, they will often invent an iconic sign that displays mimetic properties.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Klima, Edward|author2= Bellugi, Ursula|title=The Signs of Language|journal= Sign Language Studies|volume= 1062|issue=1|year= 1989|pages=  11}}</ref> Though it never disappears from a particular sign language, iconicity is gradually weakened as forms of sign languages become more customary and are subsequently grammaticized. As a form becomes more conventional, it becomes disseminated in a methodical way phonologically to the rest of the sign language community.<ref>Brentari, Diane. "Introduction." Sign Languages, 2011, pp. 12.</ref> Nancy Frishberg concluded that though originally present in many signs, iconicity is degraded over time through the application of natural grammatical processes.<ref name=":2" />

In 1978, psychologist [[Roger Brown (psychologist)|Roger Brown]] was one of the first to suggest that the properties of ASL give it a clear advantage in terms of learning and memory.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Brown | first1 = R | year = 1978 | title = Why Are Signed Languages Easier to Learn than Spoken Languages? Part Two | journal = Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences | volume = 32 | issue = 3| pages = 25–44 | doi = 10.2307/3823113 | jstor = 3823113 }}</ref>  In his study, Brown found that when a group of six hearing children were taught signs that had high levels of iconic mapping they were significantly more likely to recall the signs in a later memory task than another group of six children that were taught signs that had little or no iconic properties. In contrast to Brown, linguists [[Elissa L. Newport|Elissa Newport]] and Richard Meier found that iconicity "appears to have virtually no impact on the acquisition of American Sign Language".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition|last1=Newport|first1=Elissa|last2=Meier|first2=Richard|publisher=Lawrence Erlbaum Associates|year=1985|isbn=0898593670|pages=[https://archive.org/details/crosslinguistics0001unse/page/881 881–938]|url=https://archive.org/details/crosslinguistics0001unse/page/881}}</ref>

A central task for the pioneers of sign language linguistics was trying to prove that ASL was a real language and not merely a collection of gestures or "English on the hands." One of the prevailing beliefs at this time was that "real languages" must consist of an arbitrary relationship between form and meaning. Thus, if ASL consisted of signs that had iconic form-meaning relationship, it could not be considered a real language. As a result, iconicity as a whole was largely neglected in research of sign languages for a long time. However, iconicity also plays a role in many spoken languages. Spoken [[Japanese language|Japanese]] for example exhibits many words mimicking the sounds of their potential referents (see [[Japanese sound symbolism]]). Later researchers, thus, acknowledged that natural languages do not need to consist of an arbitrary relationship between form and meaning.<ref>For the history of research on iconicity in sign languages see, for example: Vermeerbergen, Myriam (2006): Past and current trends in sign language research. In: Language & Communication, 26(2). 168-192.</ref> The visual nature of sign language simply allows for a greater degree of iconicity compared to spoken languages as most real-world objects can be described by a prototypical shape (e.g., a table usually has a flat surface), but most real-world objects do not make prototypical sounds that can be mimicked by spoken languages (e.g., tables do not make prototypical sounds). However, sign languages are not fully iconic. On the one hand, there are also many arbitrary signs in sign languages and, on the other hand, the grammar of a sign language puts limits to the degree of iconicity: All known sign languages, for example, express lexical concepts via manual signs. From a truly iconic language one would expect that a concept like smiling would be expressed by mimicking a smile (i.e., by performing a smiling face). All known sign languages, however, do not express the concept of smiling by a smiling face, but by a manual sign.<ref>Bross, Fabian (2020). The clausal syntax of German Sign Language. A cartographic approach. Berlin: Language Science Press. Page 25.</ref>

The [[cognitive linguistics]] perspective rejects a more traditional definition of iconicity as a relationship between linguistic form and a concrete, real-world referent. Rather it is a set of selected correspondences between the form and meaning of a sign.<ref name="Taub 2001">Taub, S. (2001). ''Language from the body''. New York : Cambridge University Press.</ref> In this view, iconicity is grounded in a language user's mental representation ("[[construal]]" in [[cognitive grammar]]). It is defined as a fully grammatical and central aspect of a sign language rather than a peripheral phenomenon.<ref name="Wilcox 2004"/>

The cognitive linguistics perspective allows for some signs to be fully iconic or partially iconic given the number of correspondences between the possible parameters of form and meaning.<ref name="Wilcox 2000"/> In this way, the [[Israeli Sign Language]] (ISL) sign for ''ask'' has parts of its form that are iconic ("movement away from the mouth" means "something coming from the mouth"), and parts that are arbitrary (the handshape, and the orientation).<ref name="Meir 2010"/>

Many signs have [[metaphoric]] mappings as well as iconic or metonymic ones. For these signs there are three-way correspondences between a form, a concrete source and an abstract target meaning. The ASL sign LEARN has this three-way correspondence. The abstract target meaning is "learning". The concrete source is putting objects into the head from books. The form is a grasping hand moving from an open palm to the forehead. The iconic correspondence is between form and concrete source. The metaphorical correspondence is between concrete source and abstract target meaning. Because the concrete source is connected to two correspondences linguistics refer to metaphorical signs as "double mapped".<ref name="Taub 2001"/><ref name="Wilcox 2000"/><ref name="Meir 2010"/>
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