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. 2021 Aug 23;4(1):43.
doi: 10.5334/joc.166. eCollection 2021.

A Complete Real-World Theory of Language Should Explain How Iconicity Remains a Stable Property of Linguistic Systems

Marcus Perlman  1 , Greg Woodin  1
Affiliations

A Complete Real-World Theory of Language Should Explain How Iconicity Remains a Stable Property of Linguistic Systems

Marcus Perlman et al. J Cogn. .

Abstract

Murgiano et al. make a compelling case for studying iconicity in multimodal face-to-face interaction, but they appear ambivalent about the importance of iconicity at the level of the linguistic system. We argue that, rather than decreasing over time, iconicity is a stable property of languages. Understanding how and why this is so is critical to building a complete real-world theory of language that bridges the situated context of language use with language as an evolving symbolic system. An important point for future research is to examine the interface between iconic prosody and the latent iconic features of words and signs that are frozen in the linguistic system.

Keywords: Embodied cognition; Language production; Semantics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

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