Webbläsaren som du använder stöds inte av denna webbplats. Alla versioner av Internet Explorer stöds inte längre, av oss eller Microsoft (läs mer här: * https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Var god och använd en modern webbläsare för att ta del av denna webbplats, som t.ex. nyaste versioner av Edge, Chrome, Firefox eller Safari osv.

Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to sound symbolism

Författare

Summary, in English

It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of "the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign" is in conflict with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon commonly known as "sound symbolism". After first presenting a historical overview of the debate, however, we conclude that both positions have been exaggerated, and that an adequate explanation of sound symbolism is still lacking. How can there, for example, be (perceived) similarity between expressions and contents across different sensory modalities? We offer an answer, based on the Peircian notion of iconic ground, and G. Sonesson's distinction between primary and secondary iconicity. Furthermore, we describe an experimental study, in a paradigm first pioneered by W. Kohler, and recently popularized by V. Ramachandran, in which we varied vowels and consonants in fictive word-forms, and conclude that both types of sounds play a role in perceiving an iconic ground between the word-forms and visual figures. The combination of historical conceptual analysis, semiotic explication and psychological experimentation presented in this article is characteristic of the emerging paradigm of cognitive semiotics.

Publiceringsår

2010

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

298-348

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

Sign Systems Studies

Volym

38

Issue

1/4

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

Tartu University Press

Ämne

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Nyckelord

  • iconicity
  • sound symbolism
  • arbitrariness
  • ideophones
  • psychomimes
  • expressives
  • semiotics
  • cognitive semiotics

Aktiv

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 1406-4243