Tai (2005) argues for the importance of iconicity as a fundamental property of language, illustrating the modality effects of iconicity through the study of a set of iconic devices used in Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). This paper extends Tai’s research, in exploring the iconic devices used in another Asian sign language, Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Some preliminary comparisons are made in this p...

Early studies investigating sign language acquisition claimed that signs whose structures are motivated by the form of their referent (iconic) are not favoured in language development. However, recent work has shown that the first signs in deaf children’s lexicon are iconic. In this paper we go a step further and ask whether different types of iconicity modulate learning sign-referent links. Re...

Previous studies have shown that iconic graphical signs can evolve into symbols through repeated usage within dyads and interacting communities. Here we investigate the evolution of graphical signs over chains of participants. In these chains (or "replacement microsocieties"), membership of an interacting group changed repeatedly such that the most experienced members were continually replaced ...

Iconicity is a powerful cue to symbolic meaning. However, it is unclear from previous research whether language learners benefit from iconicity. Prior research indicates that the motor system supports language acquisition, suggesting that iconicity expressed via this modality may be particularly salient. The present study investigates the effects of iconicity and enactment on the acquisition of...

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate whether the motor-iconic basis of certain forms in American Sign Language (ASL) partially alters the neural systems engaged during lexical retrieval. Most ASL nouns denoting tools and ASL verbs referring to tool-based actions are produced with a handshape representing the human hand holding a tool and with an iconic movement depicting canonic...

In his 1903 Syllabus, Charles S. Peirce makes a distinction between icons and iconic signs, or hypoicons, and briefly introduces a division of the last ones into images, diagrams and metaphors. Peirce scholars have tried to make better sense of those concepts by understanding iconic signs in the context of the 10 classes of signs described in the same Syllabus. We will argue, however, that the ...

Although Charles Peirce only rarely applied his semeiotic principles to art, ideas are highly informative for contemplating the exchange of qualitative meaningin iconic signs constitutive art. Reflecting on Peirce’s theory icon, three hypo-iconic sub-types, formative role sign-interpretant, and metaphysical “qualisignificance” a universe “perfused with signs”, I provide some theoretical notes t...

There is growing interest in learners’ cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back on their L1 to process novel signs because the m...