All shades of iconicity: Ideophones, onomatopoeia, and sound symbolism (convenors: Maria Flaksman, Kathryn Barnes, and Aleksandra Ćwiek)
Published in The 21st International Congress of Linguists (ICL), 2024
The workshop will take place during the International Congress of Linguists in Poznań.
Iconicity is understood (after Charles Sanders Peirce) as a relationship of resemblance between the signifier and the signified. It is known to penetrate all levels of language: modern languages across the globe are reported to contain iconic (imitative) words in their lexicons ‒ ideophones, onomatopoeic, and mimetic words (see Anderson 1998, Bańko 2009, Childs 1988, Hinton et al. 1994, Körtvélyessy 2011, Moreno-Cabrera 2020, Voeltz et al. 2001, Voronin 2006). Signed languages also have a high percentage of self-evident, ‘transparent’ signs (Frishberg 1975, Klima & Bellugi 1979, Perniss et al. 2017). Iconicity is also attested in morphology and syntax (Fischer 2001, Haiman 1985), for example, it manifests itself in the form of sentence structure which reflects the sequence of the events which are being described.
This workshop is designed for the purpose of discussion of differences and similarities between iconic words and related phenomena in languages from different families.
This workshop focuses on all shades of iconicity, from the description and comparison of different classes of imitative words (ideophones, onomatopoeic, and sound symbolic words) to various iconic and sound-symbolic phenomena in languages across the globe. We welcome talk proposals on the following iconicity-related subjects, among others:
- Onomatopoeic words and ideophones – their typology and classification
- System-integration and markedness of ideophones / imitative interjections
- Diachronic changes in imitative vocabularies
- Cross-linguistic studies in lexical iconicity and sound symbolism
- Imitative words as parts of speech and their syntax
- Experimental research on sound symbolism
- Iconicity in grammar
- Iconicity in gesture
- Iconicity in animal communication
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Childs, G. T. 1988. The phonology of Kisi ideophones. In Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 10, 165–190
Dingemanse, M. 2019. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept. In K. Akita & P. Pardeshi (Eds.), Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives (pp. 13–33). Amsterdam: Benjamins
Fischer, O. 2001. The position of the adjective in (Old) English from an iconic perspective. In O. Fischer & M. Nänny (Eds.). The Motivated Sign [Iconicity in Language and Literature 2]. (pp. 249–276). Amsterdam: Benjamins
Frishberg, N. 1975. Arbitrariness and iconicity: Historical change in American Sign Language, Language 51.3: 696-719
Haiman, J. (Ed.) 1985. Iconicity in Syntax [Typological Studies in Language, 6]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
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Klima, E., & Bellugi, U. 1979. The Signs of Language. Harvard: Harvard University Press
Moreno-Cabrera, J. C. 2020. Iconicity in Language: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Perniss, P., Lu, J., Morgan, G., & Vigliocco, G. 2017. Mapping language to the world: the role of iconicity in the sign language input. In Developmental Science, 21(2)
Voeltz, E. F. K. & Kilian-Hatz. Ch. (Eds.). 2001. Ideophones [Typological Studies in Language 44]. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Voronin, S. V. 2006 [1982]. Osnovy Phonosemantiki [The fundamentals of phonosemantics]. Moscow: Lenand