Seeing Structure: Iconicity from Handshape to Grammar in ASL and Libras

For the first fifty years of research on signed languages, the prevalence of iconicity was largely taken to be a side-effect of the visual modality. Signed language researchers wanted to prove that signed languages were equivalent to spoken languages, and because spoken languages were understood to be mostly arbitrary, they downplayed the importance of iconicity as a property of signed languages. Now, we understand that iconicity is a general property of both signed and spoken languages, with spoken languages having much more iconicity than previously imagined. Recent work has shown that iconicity plays an important role in the structure, organization, and processing of individual languages.

In this talk, I show that signed and spoken languages use different kinds of iconic mappings, due to modality affordances. I discuss why definitions of “iconicity” matter for how we study it. Focusing on data from Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) and ASL (American Sign Language), I demonstrate how sign languages make use of iconic mappings, from phonological patterns to morphosyntactic patterns. I close with a discussion of how best to understand the emergence and maintenance of iconicity and why iconicity does not necessarily erode toward arbitrariness, over time.

Drª Corrine Occhino  (University of Texas at Austin/EUA) 

Moderador: André Xavier Nogueira (UFPR)