Cognitive iconicity: Conceptual spaces,

meaning, and gesture in signed languages

SHERMAN WILCOX*

Abstract

Adopting the framework of cognitive grammar, I define cognitive iconicity

as a special case in which the phonological and the semantic poles of a
symbolic structure reside in the same region of conceptual space. One rea-
son for the richness of iconic representation present in signed languages
is that the phonological pole of signs involves objects moving in space as
viewed from a certain vantage point: hands moving in space as viewed by
the signer and the observer. The study reports cross-linguistic data which
provide evidence for how cognitive iconicity is extensively manifest in
signed languages, not just lexically but also in morphology, grammatical
classes, and autonomous–dependent relations in hand–face constructions. I
also propose that cognitive iconicity illuminates the relation between ges-
ture and language, and the process by which linguistic structures arise from
gestural sources. A re-examination of arbitrariness and iconicity from a
cognitive iconicity perspective suggests that the two can coexist, since both
are reflections of a deeper, underlying cognitive basis of language.

Keywords: signed language; iconicity; gesture.

1. Iconicity and signed languages1

With one exception, developments within the field of signed language
linguistics parallel those of spoken language linguistics. Linguists report
that signed languages manifest the same characteristics that have been
discovered for spoken languages. Two conclusions are drawn: (1) signed
languages are true, natural human languages, and (2) since these striking
commonalities appear in languages transmitted in di¤erent media (optical
versus acoustic), the human language ability must depend on abstract,
modality-independent, and purely linguistic abilities. If ever there were

6 Walter de Gruyter
Cognitive Linguistics 15–2 (2004), 119–147 0936–5907/04/0015–0119
120 S. Wilcox

evidence that the material, bodily substance of language plays no role

in grammar, spoken and signed languages seem to provide it. Linguists
working in a variety of theoretical frameworks now accept the first con-
clusion. The second conclusion, I claim, is not warranted, and the argu-
ments and data presented in this article suggest a quite di¤erent conclu-
sion: signed and spoken languages are united by their common basis in
embodied cognition.
The one exception is iconicity. While spoken language linguists work-
ing within cognitive and functional frameworks have provided a growing
body of evidence for the ubiquity of iconicity in spoken languages (Hai-
man 1980, 1983, 1985; Simone 1995), signed language linguists com-
monly relegate iconicity to the periphery.2
Within the signed language literature, iconicity has been viewed as a
relation between linguistic form and reality. Wilbur (1987: 162), for ex-
ample, defines iconicity as ‘‘a reflection in language of the actual state
of a¤airs in the real world’’. Valli and Lucas (1995: 6) regard the iconic
relation to be one in which ‘‘the form of the symbol is an icon or picture
of some aspect of the thing or activity being symbolized’’—again imply-
ing that the relation is between linguistic form and some objective, unin-
terpreted world.
Reading the literature on signed languages one would come to the
conclusion that iconicity, though present in the lexicon, has very little to
do with the grammars of signed languages. Although this reaction to
iconicity might come as a surprise to cognitively oriented linguists, it is
understandable given the historical and linguistic debate that has sur-
rounded signed languages.
From the time that the Abbe de l’Epée established a school for deaf
children in Paris in the late eighteenth century, education in much of Eu-
rope and throughout America was based on a system of signing. Oppo-
nents of signed languages began to espouse a system of oral education,
culminating in the Milan Conference of 1880. Arguments in support of
speech and against sign resulted in a ban on the use of signed languages
in schools for the deaf that lasted well into the middle of the twentieth
century. They also set the course for linguistic studies of signed languages,
a course which made it di‰cult for linguists to acknowledge the role of
iconicity.
Consider the words of Giulio Tarra, the president of the Milan
conference:

Gesture is not the true language of man which suits the dignity of his nature.
Gesture, instead of addressing the mind, addresses the imagination and the senses.
Moreover, it is not and never will be the language of society . . . Thus, for us it
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 121

is an absolute necessity to prohibit that language and to replace it with living

speech, the only instrument of human thought. . . . Oral speech is the sole power
that can rekindle the light God breathed into man when, giving him a soul in a
corporeal body, he gave him also a means of understanding, of conceiving, and of
expressing himself. . . . While, on the one hand, mimic signs are not su‰cient to
express the fullness of thought, on the other they enhance and glorify fantasy and
all the faculties of the sense of imagination. . . . The fantastic language of signs
exalts the senses and foments the passions, whereas speech elevates the mind
much more naturally, with calm and truth and avoids the danger of exaggerating
the sentiment expressed and provoking harmful mental impressions. (Lane 1984:
393–394)

Signed language linguists were powerfully influenced by these views:

linguists had a definite sense that admitting the existence of iconicity in sign lan-
guages was admitting that sign languages were not ‘‘real’’ languages, certainly not
as real as spoken languages whose forms were supposedly arbitrary. (Valli and
Lucas 1995: 6)

The solution was to dismiss the iconicity that is so apparent in these

languages. During the 1970s and 1980s, when linguists were actively ad-
vocating for the linguistic status of signed languages, the literature con-
cluded that iconicity erodes over time (Frishberg 1975), that it plays
no role in children’s language development (Meier 1980), and that the
grammars of signed languages override and submerge iconicity (Klima
and Bellugi 1979).
My claim is that when viewed from a cognitive perspective, grammati-
cal iconicity is revealed to be just as ubiquitous among signed languages
as it is among spoken languages—indeed, because visible movements of
hands have even more semiotic potential than the predominantly invisible
movements of vocal tract articulators, signed languages are even more
richly iconic than spoken languages.
Researchers who argue that grammar acts to eliminate iconicity never-
theless note that iconicity plays a role in the heightened use of language
such as in poetry or other poetic genres. Russo and his colleagues (Russo
et al. 2001) confirm this for Italian Sign Language poetry and also report
that iconicity is pervasive in discourse. Taub (2001) and P. Wilcox (2000),
in describing the use of metaphor across all genres of American Sign
Language (ASL), also document the pervasive way it is integrated with
iconicity. If only because native signers know about and productively use
iconicity, then iconicity must be included in speakers’ grammars. Once we
adopt a cognitive linguistic perspective and define grammar as essentially
symbolic, the way is opened for a re-examination of the role that iconicity
122 S. Wilcox

plays in the grammar of signed languages, including grammatical classes,

morphology, and more abstract domains such as autonomous–dependent
relations in hand–face constructions.

2. Cognitive iconicity
Over the past decade (Wilcox 1993, 1998a, 1998b, 2001, 2002a), I have
been developing a model of iconicity that I call cognitive iconicity based
on the theory of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 2000).
Cognitive Grammar claims that lexicon and grammar are fully de-
scribable as assemblies of symbolic structures, that is, pairings of seman-
tic and phonological structures. From the cognitive grammar perspective,
grammar is not distinct from semantics. The elements of grammatical
description reduce to form–meaning pairings.
A critical claim of Cognitive Grammar is that both semantic and pho-
nological structures reside within semantic space, itself a subdomain of
conceptual space. Conceptual space encompasses all of our thought and
knowledge, ‘‘the multifaceted field of conceptual potential within which
thought and conceptualization unfold’’ (Langacker 1987: 76). By adopt-
ing this view we can talk about similarities as distance between structures
that reside in multidimensional conceptual space. Certain notions reside
close to each other in conceptual space because they possess certain sim-
ilarities. Other notions reside farther apart in conceptual space, reflecting
their dissimilarity.
What is critical for cognitive iconicity is that phonological notions also
reside in conceptual space. The phonological pole reflects our conceptu-
alization of pronunciations, which range from the specific pronunciation
of actual words in all their contextual richness tomore schematic concep-
tions, such as a common phonological shape shared by all verbs, or a
subset of verbs, in a particular language.
The typical case for language is that the semantic pole and the phono-
logical pole of a symbolic structure reside in vastly distant regions of
conceptual space. The sound of the spoken word dog, for example, has
little in common with the meaning of the word. This great distance in
conceptual space and the resulting incommensurability of the semantic
and phonological poles is the basis for l’arbitraire du signe. Alternatively,
when the phonological and semantic poles of signs reside in the same re-
gion of conceptual space, arbitrariness is reduced.
Thus cognitive iconicity is defined not as a relation between the form of
a sign and what it refers to in the real world, but as a relation between
two conceptual spaces. Cognitive iconicity is a distance relation between
the phonological and semantic poles of symbolic structures.
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 123

Two further notions are necessary to understand how cognitive icon-

icity works. The first is construal. The mapping relation in cognitive
iconicity is not between objectively defined forms and objectively deter-
mined scenes. As Langacker (1991a: 284) points out, there are many ways
to construe an event, and an event’s objective properties are insu‰cient to
predict its construal. This applies as well to the conception of articulatory
events. Objective properties, whether of events in the world or of articu-
latory events, play little role in cognitive iconicity. Iconicity is not a rela-
tion between the objective properties of a situation and the objective
properties of articulators. Rather, the iconic relation is between con-
struals of real-world scenes and construals of form.
Second, we must note that metaphor can create an iconic mapping
which did not exist prior to the metaphorical mapping. Because meta-
phor is a mapping across semantic domains, it can reposition the seman-
tic pole of a symbolic structure to a di¤erent region of conceptual space,
bringing it closer to a particular region of phonological space. For exam-
ple, if in some signed language time were conceived as a process and ex-
pressed phonologically as a handshape (an object instantiated in three-
dimensional space), there would be no iconic relation: processes and
objects are too distant in conceptual space to motivate cognitive iconicity.
If instead time is metaphorically conceived as an object moving in space
and realized phonologically as a moving handshape, the sign is iconic.
Borrowing a metaphor from cosmology, we can think of metaphor as a
‘‘worm hole’’ in multidimensional conceptual space. By mapping the se-
mantics of time onto our conception of a moving object, metaphor folds
conceptual space onto itself so as to bring the semantic pole of time into
proximity with its phonological realization as a hand moving in signing
space.
An example from ASL will help to demonstrate. As we have seen, one
claim is that iconicity is submerged by grammar (Klima and Bellugi
1979). The example that is o¤ered to support this claim is the morpho-
logical marking of intensification on certain statives in ASL, expressed
phonologically as an initial hold of the sign’s movement followed by
sudden, rapid release. When this grammatical marker appears on the
ASL sign SLOW, the resulting sign means ‘very slow’. Klima and Bellugi
point out that the sign VERY-SLOW is made with a fast movement—
faster than that used in the sign SLOW: ‘‘Thus the form of ‘very slow’ is
incongruent with the meaning of the basic sign’’ (1979: 30). It is this fact
that supports their claim that the grammar has submerged iconicity:
‘‘One of the most striking e¤ects of regular morphological operations on
signs is the distortion of form so that iconic aspects of the signs are over-
ridden and submerged’’ (1979: 30).
124 S. Wilcox

A cognitive iconicity analysis leads to a di¤erent conclusion. First, note

that VERY-SLOW is multimorphemic, consisting of the root lexical
morpheme SLOW and a bound, grammatical morpheme marking inten-
sification. The same bound morpheme appears on other lexical roots,
such as VERY-SMART and VERY-FAST.
While it is true that the form of VERY-SLOW is incongruent with the
meaning of the lexical root SLOW, it is not true that the form of the in-
tensifier morpheme is incongruent with its meaning. In fact, it is iconic.
To see this, we must note two facts about the conceptualization of inten-
sity. Intensity is a conceptually dependent notion: intensity depends on a
prior conception of what is being intensified. Something is ‘very slow’ or
‘very big’ but not simply ‘very’. Second, the abstract notion of intensity is
often understood metaphorically by reference to more grounded concepts
such as the build-up and sudden release of internal pressure, as happens
when we shake a soda can and then open it.3
How then is the form VERY-SLOW iconic? First, it is iconic because
the articulators directly represent the metaphoric conceptualization of
intensity as a sudden release of pent-up pressure: the phonetic realization
of this bound morpheme is an initial hold followed by the sudden release
of the lexical morpheme’s movement.4 Second, intensity as a conceptually
dependent notion is iconically represented: change in how the sign’s
movement is articulated is conceptually dependent because it relies on a
prior conception of what movement was produced in this way.
This re-examination leads to three conclusions. First, whether or not it
can be shown that grammar may sometimes submerge iconicity, iconicity
clearly also emerges on the more grammatical elements of morphologi-
cally complex forms. Second, analyzing iconicity requires that we exam-
ine not just our conceptualization of objects and events in the world, but
also of articulations—hands and movements—that are the phonological
pole of signed languages. Third, the iconic mapping of form and meaning
in some cases is created by a metaphoric mapping.

3. Conceptualizing the articulators

By grounding grammar in embodied conceptualization, cognitive gram-

mar provides a link between our perception of the world as populated by
objects moving through space and time and the grammatical categories
and constructions used to represent these same ideas. Cognitive grammar
also provides an essential element for describing cognitive iconicity—a
framework for conceptualizing the articulators of signed languages. Since
signed languages are produced by hands moving in space and time and
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 125

perceived visually, the same theoretical constructs that are used to de-
scribe semantic structures can describe the hands as objects of conceptu-
alization within a linguistic system.
In his pioneering analysis of the phonological structure of signed lan-
guages, Stokoe (1960) identified three major aspects of word formation:
handshape, movement, and location. Battison (1978) added a fourth,
orientation (the direction in which the palm faces). Certain conceptual
properties of signed language articulators are discernable:
i. The hands are autonomous objects manifest in the spatial domain.
ii. Location is a dependent property, manifest in the spatial and tem-
poral domain.
iii. Orientation is a dependent property of handshapes, manifest in the
spatial domain.
iv. Movement is a dependent property of handshapes, manifest in the
temporal domain.
Setting aside location for the moment, signs are prototypical instances
of two major conceptual constructs of cognitive grammar: things (hand-
shapes) and processes (movement). Hands are prototypical objects in in-
teraction, either with other hands or other objects.
The location parameter spans the spatial and temporal domains. Lo-
cations have no overt articulatory manifestation; it is only by being the
setting for objects that locations become manifest. The objects so located
may be either actual (e.g., a handshape produced in a certain location) or
virtual; when a location is virtual, it must be indicated phonologically in
some way, such as a deictic gesture of the hand or eyes.
Phonological locations also may have a temporal dimension—a change
in location. Change in phonological location may be used to represent a
change in conceptual location; this change may either be actual or meta-
phorical. Change in location may be construed metaphorically as move-
ment through space or time. It will be obvious in the following discussion
that location is a rich source of grammatical iconicity, but I will not ex-
plore the topic further here (see Wilcox 2002a).5
Schematicity and specificity are also critical aspects of cognitive icon-
icity. In most instances of cognitive iconicity it is necessary to describe
specific construed properties of handshapes or of movements—specific
handshapes and their features, specific movements with associated man-
ners of movement, paths, and so forth in order to discover their similarity
to semantic structure. In some cases, however, such as when the semantic
pole of a symbolic structure is itself highly schematic, cognitive iconicity
will depend on a correspondingly schematic phonological structure. Such
is the case with the iconic mapping of grammatical classes.
126 S. Wilcox

3.1. Embodied conceptual models

Two idealized cognitive models provide the theoretical apparatus for
conceptualizing the articulators of signed languages. These are the
billiard-ball model, which describes the structure of events and provides
the framework for understanding grammatical constructs such as nouns
and verbs, and the stage model, which systematically links our conceptual
abilities to perceptual abilities. Both models are grounded in everyday
experience and form the embodied basis of our conception of the world.
The billiard-ball model encapsulates our conception of the world as
being populated by discrete physical objects capable of moving about
through space and making contact with one another (Langacker 1991a:
13). The billiard-ball model also captures the nature of dependency rela-
tions between objects and interactions (Langacker 1991a). Objects can be
conceptualized independently of their interactions: we can conceive of
billiard balls independently of their energetic interactions on a pool table.
Interactions, on the other hand, do not exist entirely independently of
their participants. The conception of an interaction inherently presup-
poses the entities through which it is manifested: ‘‘Objects are therefore
conceptually autonomous, and interactions conceptually dependent’’ (Lan-
gacker 1991a: 14).
The stage model (Langacker 1991a: 284) captures certain aspects of
our conceptual abilities by relating them to the perceptual experience.
The analogy is made to the experience of a theatergoer watching the
action taking place on a stage. The observer gazes outward and focuses
his attention on a particular region, the stage. On stage, actors move
about and handle various props. Action on stage is organized temporally
into events. The stage model works in conjunction with the billiard-ball
model, which captures the nature of the moving participants being ob-
served. The visual perception of these moving objects forms the basis of
role archetypes upon which semantic roles are built.
Because they reflect our experience as mobile and sentient creatures
who interact with and manually manipulate physical objects (Lan-
gacker 1991a: 285), these conceptual archetypes emerge from our visual
perceptual and motoric abilities. Their appearance at the heart of gram-
mar suggests that embodied conceptual abilities—rather than abstract,
modality-independent, and purely linguistic abilities—account for the
commonalities that we see across signed and spoken languages.

4. Cognitive iconicity and signed language grammar

In the following sections I o¤er data from ASL to demonstrate the ways
in which iconicity is pervasive in various facets of grammar: polymor-
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 127

phemic classifier predicates; grammatical classes; atemporal and temporal

relations; and autonomy–dependence relations.

4.1. Hands as things, movement as process:

Complex polymorphemic forms
One way in which handshapes represent things and movement represents
process in signed languages is their use in so-called classifier predicates.
Frishberg (1975: 715) first introduced the term ‘‘classifier’’ to describe a
particular type of predicate in ASL in which a handshape is used to
express a verb of motion:

ASL uses certain hand-shapes in particular orientations for certain semantic

features of noun arguments. Thus the verb MEET has no ‘‘neutral’’ form: the
citation form actually means ‘one person meets one person’, or perhaps more
specifically ‘one self-moving object with a dominant vertical dimension meets one
self-moving object with a dominant vertical dimension’. If trees started walking,
they would MEET one another in the same way. Many of these classifiers are
productive and analyzable, although not strictly transparent.

Classifier predicates are polymorphemic forms consisting of mor-

phemes for movement, manner of movement, semantic characteristics
of the moving object, location in space, and so forth (Engberg-Pedersen
1993). According to Newport and Meier (1985: 885), classifier predicates
exhibit the following formational patterns:

The handshape is a classifier for the semantic category (e.g. human vs. animate
nonhuman vs. vehicle) or size and shape of the moving object; the movement path
(one of a small number of discretely di¤erent movements, e.g. straight vs. circular
vs. arc) is a morpheme representing the path of motion of the moving object; the
manner of movement is a morpheme for the manner of motion along the path
(e.g. bounce vs. roll vs. random); a second handshape (typically produced on the
left hand) is a classifier for a secondary object, with respect to which the primary
object moves; and the placement of the second handshape along the path is a
morpheme for the spatial relationship of the movement path with respect to this
secondary object (e.g. from vs. to vs. past).6

The relation of form and meaning in Newport and Meier’s description

is striking. First, note that across all of these forms handshapes represent
objects and their features, and movements represent motions. Classifier
predicates thus exhibit a systematic pattern of iconic relations in which
semantic objects, the things of cognitive grammar, are mapped onto
handshape, and process is mapped onto phonological movement.
128 S. Wilcox

Figure 1. The ASL sign CHANGE in citation form

4.2. Atemporal and temporal relations

In addition to mapping phonological movement to process, ASL has
devices for expressing atemporal relations as well. In a conversation in
ASL,7 a deaf man is asked to describe the changes he has seen occur over
the past several decades. He responds: MUCH CHANGE ‘a lot has
changed’. He then describes some of the things that have changed, and
concludes: CHANGE-OVER-TIME ‘a slow and steady change has taken
place during this time’. The ASL sign meaning ‘change’ is produced in
citation form with a twisting motion of the two hands (Figure 1).
A pattern of iconic mapping is revealed by comparing the two forms
of CHANGE. The first form of CHANGE is produced by moving the
hands rapidly from their initial to final configuration, which is held
slightly before the signer continues. This form of CHANGE is a stative or
simple atemporal relation.8 Atemporal relations lack a positive tempo-
ral profile and rely on summary as opposed to sequential scanning. The
atemporal relation views the scene holistically, designating only the final
state of the overall process. The iconic mapping is apparent: by moving
the hands rapidly into the final, held configuration (thus decreasing the
significance of movement), the phonological structure of the sign resides
in the same conceptual space as its semantic structure.
CHANGE-OVER-TIME is produced with a slow, steady twisting
movement. CHANGE-OVER-TIME is a full verb form, a relation hav-
ing a positive temporal profile whose evolution through time is portrayed
by sequential scanning. Whereas the stative form CHANGE designates
only the final state of a process, CHANGE-OVER-TIME designates a
continuous series of states distributed over time. Again, the phonologi-
cal structure reveals its iconicity: the slow twisting motion brings into
prominence the sequential scanning indicative of the semantic structure
of a verb. Thus, the atemporal relation form CHANGE highlights only
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 129

the start and end points of a temporal path, while the full verb form
CHANGE-OVER-TIME invites the viewer to watch all the steps along
the way.
Moreover, in the form CHANGE-OVER-TIME, the twisting move-
ment of the sign is superimposed on a slow, side-to-side movement along
a sequential time-line (Engberg-Pedersen 1993). In this way, the form
iconically and metaphorically maps movement through time onto move-
ment through space.

4.3. Aspect
Further evidence of the iconic mapping of temporal relations comes from
the systematic way in which the ASL verb forms are grammatically
marked for aspect. Comrie (1976: 3) defines aspect as ‘‘di¤erent ways of
viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation’’. Klima and
Bellugi (1979: 292–294) describe a number of ways in which ASL verbs
can be marked for temporal aspect (Figure 2).
Two patterns are evident. First, aspectual marking in general is iconic:
changes to the internal temporal constituency of the verb (the semantic
pole) are represented by modifications to the temporal constituency of the
sign’s movement. Second, the iconic mapping of time extends across
di¤erent aspectual forms. For example, Klima and Bellugi (1979) give the
meaning of the protractive form of LOOK-AT as ‘to stare at (uninter-
ruptedly)’. The semantic pole of this form represents a situation in which
there is no change to the internal structure of, and no well-defined end
points for, the verb process. The stable situation of ‘‘looking at’’ persists
unchanged through conceived time. This situation is described in cogni-
tive grammar as an imperfective process in which all of the component
states of a process are identical, and the verb profiles the continuation
through time of a stable situation (Langacker 1991a: 21). The semantic
structure of protractive aspect in ASL is iconically represented by its
phonological pole: the ASL verb form is articulated with a static form,
unmoving and therefore unchanging through conceived time.
Klima and Bellugi (1979: 292) note these patterns as well, although
they make no mention of the iconicity involved:

The di¤erences in meaning indicated by inflections for di¤erent grammatical cat-

egories are mirrored by general di¤erences in form. The most salient formal
characteristic of inflections for number and distributional aspect is spatial pat-
terning, with displacement along lines, arcs, and circles in vertical and horizontal
planes. By contrast, inflections for temporal aspect rely heavily on temporal pat-
terning, making crucial use of dynamic qualities such as rate, tension, evenness,
length, and manner in the movement of signs.
130 S. Wilcox

Figure 2. Verb aspect in ASL. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Klima and Bellugi
1979: 293. Copyright : 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.)

Clearly, the iconic mapping of space and time is pervasive in the

grammar of ASL (see Wilcox 2002a for further discussion).

4.4. Grammatical classes

Iconicity would seem to be impossible to find in grammatical classes
for two reasons. First, if we accept the traditional view of iconicity as a
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 131

relation between language and the real world, we would find no iconic
mapping because grammatical classes do not exist in the real world: they
are purely relational phenomena within the world of language. Second,
within the traditional view of language, grammatical classes cannot be
defined in notional terms, and so they have no semantic pole. Even func-
tional linguists dismiss the possibility that grammatical categories such as
nouns and verbs could be accounted for solely by means of semantics
(Hopper and Thompson 1984). It is not surprising then that signed lan-
guage linguists make statements such as the following (Valli and Lucas
1995: 7):

It is probably true that the form of the sign SIT is an iconic representation of
human legs sitting . . . [However,] focusing on its iconicity will not provide much
insight into the interesting relationship between SIT and the noun CHAIR, and
other noun-verb pairs.

What Valli and Lucas are claiming is that, while the shape of the hands
in SIT and CHAIR may iconically represent human legs and the seat of a
chair, the relation between morphologically related nouns and verbs such
as CHAIR and SIT is not iconically represented.
A key claim of cognitive grammar is that nouns and verbs lend them-
selves to schematic semantic characterization. A noun profiles a region
in some domain, given the technical term thing. Verbs comprise a series
of stative relations distributed continuously through conceived time, the
component states viewed serially rather than holistically (Langacker
1991b: 20–21). This relation is called a process. Cognitive grammar thus
claims that the noun class profiles a thing and the verb class profiles a
process (Figure 3).
As symbolic structures, noun and verb classes also have phonological
poles. In most cases the phonological poles of nouns and verbs are so
schematic, consisting only of some phonological specification, that they
may be left unspecified, as indicated in Figure 3 by an ellipsis at the pho-
nological pole. If there were a regular phonological distinction marking
nouns and verbs, the phonological pole would reflect this.
This is the case for ASL and many other signed languages, in which a
systematic phonological pattern marks certain nouns and verbs (Supalla
and Newport 1978). In ASL, for example, the noun BOOK is phonolog-
ically related to the verb OPEN-BOOK: BOOK is made with redupli-
cated, short movements, while OPEN-BOOK uses one long movement
(Figure 4).
Klima and Bellugi (1979: 295–296) note that, while both continuous
and hold manner occur in the verb signs (a continuous sweep as opposed
132 S. Wilcox

(a) (b)
Figure 3. Noun schema (a) and verb schema (b)

to a noticeable stop at the end of the movement), the noun forms have
reduplicated movement and a restrained manner. As a result, the nouns
are typically made with smaller movements than their related verbs.
Because these noun–verb pairs have schematic phonological specifica-
tions, they exhibit cognitive iconicity in two ways. First, these forms are
often iconic for some aspect of their lexical meaning: SIT and CHAIR
do iconically represent legs dangling o¤ of the flat seat of a chair. These
forms also iconically represent grammatical class. Because of their re-
strained manner and reduplicated movement, noun forms are articulated
in a region of conceptual space occupied by things. Verb forms, because

(a) The ASL noun BOOK (b) The ASL verb OPEN-BOOK

Figure 4. Noun–verb pairs in ASL. (Reprinted with permission from Valli and Lucas 1995:
176, fig. 21.)
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 133

of their salient movement through space, reside in the region of concep-

tual space occupied by processes.
Finally, note that this is a case where cognitive iconicity relies not on
specificity at the semantic and phonological poles but on schematicity.
The reason these noun–verb forms are iconic is precisely because they
share highly schematic phonological characteristics with their respective
schematic semantic pole.

4.5. The iconicity of autonomous–dependent structures:

Hand–face constructions
Autonomy–dependency is defined by Langacker (1987: 300) as a relation
between two structures such that one structure, D, is dependent on the
other, A, to the extent that A constitutes an elaboration of a salient sub-
structure within D. We have already seen how conceptual autonomy–
dependence relates to signs, noting that signs as objects are conceptually
autonomous and movements as interactions are conceptually dependent.
Autonomous–dependent (A/D) structure also extends beyond the realm
of objects and interactions. When we turn our attention to motion, we see
that type of motion is autonomous relative to the more conceptually de-
pendent manner of motion. The same is true for phonological movement:
while type of movement (e.g., linear, circular) is phonologically autono-
mous, manner of movement (e.g., fast, slow, accelerating) is phonologi-
cally dependent. This autonomous–dependent relation was mapped icon-
ically in the ASL intensifier morpheme. It also appeared in the iconic
mapping of verb aspect discussed above: the conceptually dependent
grammatical marking of aspect is expressed phonologically as manner of
movement.
Specific constellations of facial behaviors, such as gestures made with
the mouth (tongue protruding as in the pronunciation of /th/), the eyes
(squinting, open wide), eyebrows (furrowed brows), and so forth, serve as
obligatory morphological marking and co-occur with the manual string
over which they have scope (Reilly 2000: 416). When they occur in hand–
face constructions, facial markings are phonologically dependent relative
to the manual elements.9 Evidence for this claim is abundant. First, as
Reilly notes, the facial behaviors co-occur with the manual elements over
which they have scope. Second, facial markers in hand–face constructions
are widely analyzed as bound morphology. Third, the hands are privi-
leged for the coding of lexical morphemes. Lexical morphemes are so
rarely coded solely by facial markers that the few attested instances are
truly the exceptions that prove the rule.10
Fourth, the phonological autonomous–dependent asymmetry of hands
and faces is quite pronounced. Rarely if ever do we find hand–face
134 S. Wilcox

constructions in which the lexical morpheme is coded on the face and

bound morphology on the hands. This autonomous–dependent pattern
approaches a universal for signed language morphology. Finally, the
claim that facial marking is phonologically dependent on manual signs is
graphically demonstrated in transcription: the common way of indicating
facial marking is to diagram them over the written glosses of the manual
signs they accompany—a sort of orthographic iconicity, if you will, of
their phonological autonomous–dependent relation.
One class of ASL hand–face constructions is of the type given in
examples (1) and (2):11
(1) [DRIVE]-th ‘Drive carelessly.’
(2) [STUDY]-mm ‘Study carefully.’
In these constructions, the lexical stem is encoded on the hands and
the adverbial morphology is encoded as a facial marker. Semantically, the
lexical verb is autonomous while the adverbial modifier is dependent.
Thus, the autonomous–dependent relationship is iconic: the semantically
autonomous structure is coded by the phonologically autonomous hands,
and the semantically dependent structure is coded by the phonologically
dependent face.
A second class of hand–face constructions is of the type given in
examples (3) and (4):
(3) [HUNGRY]-y/n ‘Are you hungry?’
(4) [WHERE EAT]-q ‘Where are we eating?’
In these constructions, the lexical material again is expressed on the
hands and the facial marker indicates either a yes/no or a content
question. Again, the lexical semantic structures in these sentences are
autonomous and the facial markers dependent: yes/no and content
questions presuppose the semantic structures that they ask about. The
autonomous–dependent relationship is iconically mapped: the dependent
semantic structure is coded by the phonologically dependent facial
marker, and the autonomous semantic structure is coded by the phono-
logically autonomous hands.12

5. Cognitive iconicity, meaning, and gesture in signed languages

Attitudes towards signed languages such as those expressed by Giulio
Tarra not only suppressed the exploration of iconicity, they had an even
more oppressive e¤ect on the linguistic study of the relation between ges-
ture and signed languages. The prevailing view among sign linguists is
that gesture and signed language are categorically distinct, and any men-
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 135

(a) ASL ‘future’ (b) ASL ‘depart’

Figure 5. ASL ‘future’ and ‘depart’

tion of a possible relation between the two is regarded as a challenge to

the linguistic status of signed languages.
We must admit, however, that linguistic material comes from some-
where. To posit a link between gesture and signed languages and to pro-
pose a route by which gesture becomes language does not deny that each
is unique. It merely recognizes the remarkable family resemblances be-
tween signs and gestures, hinting at a common ancestor (Armstrong et al.
1995).
Gesture follows at least two routes of incorporation into signed lan-
guages. The first route begins with a gesture that is not a conventional
unit in the linguistic system. This gesture becomes incorporated into a
signed language as a lexical item. Over time, these lexical elements ac-
quire grammatical function. An example comes from the development
of futures. Using a corpus of historical and modern conversational data,
Janzen and Sha¤er (2002) demonstrate that the grammatical morpheme
marking future in ASL (Figure 5a) developed from a lexical morpheme
‘depart’ (Figure 5b).
The source of the ‘depart’ morpheme appears to be a gesture described
as early as de Jorio (2000); it is produced with the palm of the hand open
and held edgewise, moved upwards several times. This gesture is still
in use among hearing people in the Mediterranean region to signal
departure-demand and departure-description (Morris et al. 1979), as
shown in Figure 6 (note that Figure 6 is not a sign, it is a gesture made
by a hearing person).
This gesture also appears in nineteenth-century French Sign Language
(LSF) as the lexical morpheme PARTIR ‘depart’ (Figure 7).
136 S. Wilcox

Figure 6. Departure-demand/description gesture (Wylie 1977)

The second route proceeds along a di¤erent path. The source is not a
free-standing gesture capable of being incorporated as a lexical item into
a signed language. Rather, the source gesture may be one of several types,
including
i. a particular manner of movement such as that seen in the intensifier
morpheme and verb aspect,
ii. a facial gesture such as the question markers and adverbials dis-
cussed above or the topic/conditional marker (Janzen et al. 2000),
iii. various mouth and eye gestures (Cagle 2001).

Figure 7. 1855 LSF lexical sign PARTIR ‘depart’ (Brouland 1855)

 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 137

As just described, these are clearly linguistic features. Support for the
claim that they derive from gestural sources comes from their similarity
to intonation and other verbal gestures (Bolinger 1983, 1986); the identi-
fication of topic and conditional markers with nonlinguistic gestures
marking surprise (Janzen and Sha¤er 2002); and the existence of gestures
that occur in aspect-marked speech contexts (Parrill 2000, 2001; Duncan
2002) strikingly similar in form to those seen in ASL verb aspect.
These gestural types di¤er along two axes: the degree of schematicity of
their form and meaning, and their autonomous–dependent structure. The
distinction parallels that between lexical and grammatical morphology.
Langacker (1991a: 3) notes that the symbolic units generally analyzed as
lexical items tend to be morphologically simple and quite specific in their
semantic and phonological content. The units thought of as grammatical
are more schematic semantically and often phonologically; grammatical
morphemes typically have specific phonological shapes but schematic
meanings.
This description provides an explanation for these two routes of devel-
opment from gesture to language. In the first route, gestural elements that
are fairly specific in their semantic and phonological content become in-
corporated into signed languages as lexical items; these grammaticize into
units that are more schematic phonologically and semantically in ways
much the same as that found for spoken languages (Janzen and Sha¤er
2002; Wilcox 2002b). In the second route, gestural elements that have
schematic semantic content, though fairly specific phonological content,
directly take on grammatical function as they become a part of the lin-
guistic system.
This description is entirely compatible with, and predictable from, the
claims made here concerning cognitive iconicity. Visual articulators such
as hands and faces come with inherent conceptual significance. The con-
ceptual import of these articulators is present not just when they are ele-
ments in the linguistic system, but extends outside of the linguistic system
to gestures. This suggests that nonlinguistic gestures may serve as sources
for morphemes in signed languages, and that the specific properties of
these gestures will determine their developmental path as they enter the
linguistic system.
Further, we should not expect to find a categorical distinction between
meaningful gestures such as those described by Calbris (1985, 1990), Mc-
Neill (1992), and Duncan (2002) and incipient morphemes of a signed
language. Although gestures and signs di¤er, they do so along dimensions
common to both and in a continuous rather than categorical way. Di-
mensions along which symbolic structures for language vary are probably
su‰cient to describe the graded development of gesture to language
138 S. Wilcox

(Langacker 2003): symbolic complexity, specificity/schematicity, psycho-

logical entrenchment, and conventionalization.
We have already seen that specificity/schematicity is a primary factor
determining the route taken as gesture is incorporated into signed lan-
guages. Symbolic complexity, the degree to which symbolic structures are
decomposable into smaller symbolic elements, may also be a significant
factor. McNeill (1992: 21) notes that gestures lack internal complexity:
‘‘two gestures produced together don’t combine to form a larger, more
complex gesture. There is no hierarchical structure of gestures made out
of other gestures’’. We should also note, however, that when gestures
occur in co-speech contexts they are component elements in composite
(albeit cross-modal) symbolic structures.
The primary factors distinguishing the symbolic structures of gesture
and those of signed languages are psychological entrenchment and con-
ventionality. Notably, frequency of use is a major force driving both of
these factors, as it is in grammaticization.
Once a form enters the linguistic system it can undergo grammaticiza-
tion and lose its semanticity; this process can eventually erode all mean-
ing until all that is left is meaningless form. Hopper (1994) describes this
process as phonogenesis. Examples from ASL include the loss of seman-
ticity when the LSF number handshapes became incorporated into cer-
tain ASL signs. In LSF, a closed handshape with extended thumb means
‘one’ and thumb plus index finger means ‘two’. The ‘one’ handshape ap-
pears in the ASL signs TOMORROW, YESTERDAY, and ACCOM-
PANY/WITH, where it has lost its morphemic value and now exists only
as a phoneme.13 The ‘two’ handshape appears in TWENTY, TWENTY-
ONE, and THEN in ASL but does not retain the meaning of ‘two’; in all
ASL forms except these, ‘two’ is indicated by a V-handshape. Finally, we
find evidence for person marking in old LSF ‘I am mistaken’/‘you are
mistaken’ where the first-person/second-person distinction is indicated by
location: first-person ‘I am mistaken’ is signed near the chin, and second-
person ‘you are mistaken’ is signed at a neutral location in front of the
signer (Figure 8).14 Location was morphemic in old LSF, as it is in many
contemporary ASL signs marked for agreement. Only the first-person
monomorphemic form remains in ASL, meaning ‘wrong’; the chin loca-
tion is a de-morphologized phoneme.
Morphemes arise and disappear in signed languages, just as they do in
spoken languages. What is striking about the process for signed languages
is the source of grammatical morphemes. Meillet (1948: 131) claimed that
lexical items are the only known source of grammatical morphemes. As
we have seen, grammatical morphemes in signed languages arise directly
from gestural sources. When gestures are the source, the articulators al-
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 139

(a) ‘I am mistaken’ (b) ‘You are mistaken’

Figure 8. Location as morpheme in LSF (Brouland, 1855)

ready possess a conceptual significance which, along with their nascent

semantic structure, partially determine their semantic value when they
become part of the linguistic system.
Further, even though old morphemes become meaningless phonemes
through phonogenesis, they retain their inherent conceptual properties
and can be recruited as meaningful again. Frozen classifiers can thaw,
and poets can make creative, symbolic use of the inherent conceptual
significance of hands and their movements. Just as the categorical dis-
tinction between gesture and language cannot be maintained, so the dis-
tinction between phonology and morphology is a matter of degree. Mor-
phemes arise in a gradual fashion and, for signed languages, not just from
other morphemes. As Haiman (1998: 156–157) notes:

With insignificant exceptions like ‘ouch’ and ‘boo hoo’, we cannot observe how
words developed out of nonwords; however far back we go, it seems that all of
our etymologies of words trace to nothing but other older words. But we may be
able to observe the genesis of codification in the stereotyping of intonation, which,
as it has often been observed, lies at the border between paralinguistic and lin-
guistic behavior. Although there is much stereotyping (codification) in this realm,
it is inherently less digitally coded than morpho-syntax, more inherently analogic
and iconic . . . and more subject to personal variation.

When we include data from signed languages we discover that gestures

are a nonword source of lexical and grammatical morphemes.
In discussing the second route by which gesture becomes incorporated
into signed languages, I suggested that verb aspect is linked with gesture
and intonation. I am not claiming that verb aspect derives directly from
the type of gesture described by Duncan and Parrill. I do claim, however,
that manner of movement, which is how aspect is indicated in co-speech
140 S. Wilcox

gestures as well as in ASL, varies along a continuum from paralin-

guistic to morphemic. Thus, the second route by which gesture becomes
incorporated into signed languages is equivalent to the genesis of co-
dification.
Finally, just as ‘‘creeping double articulation’’ (Haiman 1998: 149)
from increasing codification occurs in spoken languages, so too is duality
of patterning an emergent and variable property of signed languages.
Partly this is due to the same factors that lead to the emergence of double
articulation in spoken languages: ‘‘as signs become emancipated from,
and autonomous relative to, their extralinguistic real-world referents,
they may be free to become more sensitive to their linguistic context, that
is, the other signs with which they co-occur’’ (Haiman 1998: 149). For
signed languages, however, this Saussurean systematicity is never devoid
of the ever-present conceptual significance of visible articulators. No
matter how much a sign increases its valeur, its relationship to other signs
in the linguistic system, its relationship to something in the world—its
signifiance—can never be totally severed.

6. Arbitrariness and iconicity revisited

Arbitrariness and iconicity often are regarded as mutually exclusive

properties of linguistic systems. The view of cognitive iconicity proposed
here does not require such an opposition; on the contrary, it permits
and even predicts that arbitrariness and iconicity can be simultaneously
present.
The view that arbitrariness and iconicity are mutually exclusive derives
from the assumption that iconicity requires full predictability: if a form is
iconic, some would claim, then we should be able to predict its form from
its meaning, and vice versa. What this assumption does not take into
consideration is the role of construal. Cognitive iconicity recognizes that
construal operates on both poles of symbolic structures. Because of this
double construal operation, a high degree of arbitrariness is always pres-
ent, even when the symbolic structure is clearly iconic. As Janzen (this
issue: 168) notes, ‘‘in a signed language, mapping the features of a highly
subjective construal of an event onto spatial discourse features introduces
a potential increase in arbitrariness in that certain aspects of the event
may be profiled at the expense of others—it is the choice of what to pro-
file that is arbitrary’’.
This fact was documented by Pietrandrea (2002) in the Italian Sign
Language (LIS) lexicon. In a study of 1,944 signs, she found that fifty
percent of handshape occurrences and sixty-seven percent of body loca-
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 141

tion occurrences had an iconic motivation. Alongside this pervasive

iconicity, however, exists a deep arbitrariness in the LIS lexicon, because
iconic signs exhibit arbitrary selection of di¤erent aspects of articulators
and referents to convey di¤erent meanings.
A second factor that permits iconicity and arbitrariness to coexist is
the inherent conceptual significance of signed language articulators. Even
though symbolic structures necessarily increase in arbitrariness as they
become part of the linguistic system, they nevertheless retain their in-
herent conceptual significance. The balance between system-internal sig-
nification versus inherent conceptual significance may often tip in favor
of the linguistic system, but a variety of factors can act to unleash the
conceptual potential of a sign’s form.
Iconicity and arbitrariness also wax and wane in another way. The
erosion of iconicity in the lexicon is o¤set by the emergence of iconicity in
the grammar, as seen in the ASL intensifier morpheme. Moreover, when
gestures serve as the source of lexical and grammatical morphology, this
reintroduces new iconicity into the system.
Iconicity is commonly identified as a motivation of linguistic form.
Cognitive iconicity suggests an alternative view: iconicity is symptomatic
of something more fundamental that unites both form and meaning.
Haiman (1980: 537) says:

Since the transformational revolution, it has been claimed that the structure of
language reflects the structure of thought, and that its study provides a ‘‘window
on the mind’’. In arguing, as I have done, for the iconicity of grammar in general,
I contend that the structure of thought in its turn reflects the structure of reality
to an extent greater than it is now fashionable to recognize.

While we may question whether iconic mappings are truly reflections

of reality—iconic mappings are always between construals of form and
construals of reality—iconicity does reveal the structure of conception.
Iconicity is symptomatic of the underlying unity of phonological and se-
mantic space as domains within our conceptual space. The congruence of
phonological and semantic structures in iconicity emanates from a com-
mon conceptual system that underlies and gives structure to both linguis-
tic form and meaning.
Signed languages, by using articulators that visibly manifest the
same grounded archetypes that underlie our conceptual abilities—objects
moving in space within our field of vision—di¤er from spoken languages
in that they have an enhanced potential for realizing these iconic map-
pings. This is a fact fully compatible with a cognitive view of language,
but it is certainly not a new insight. Charles Hockett (1978: 274) regarded
142 S. Wilcox

this di¤erence between signed and spoken languages to be one of syntac-

tic dimensionality, ‘‘that is, the geometry of the field in which the con-
stituents of a message are displayed, di¤erent arrangements often yielding
di¤erent meanings’’. Hockett’s distinction between ‘‘signages’’ and ‘‘lan-
guages’’ in the following is unnecessary, and his mention of pantomiming
unwittingly evokes the ghosts of Milan, but his point could be never more
relevant as we apply the findings of cognitive linguistics to the study of
signed languages:

The di¤erence in dimensionality means that signages can be iconic to an extent

to which languages cannot. . . . Now, while arbitrariness has its points, it also has
its drawbacks, so that it is perhaps more revealing to put it the other way around,
as a limitation of spoken languages. Indeed, the dimensionality of signing is that
of life itself, and it would be stupid not to resort to picturing, pantomiming,
or pointing whenever convenient. . . . But when a representation of some four-
dimensional hunk of life has to be compressed into the single dimension of speech,
most iconicity is necessarily squeezed out. In one-dimensional projection, an ele-
phant is indistinguishable from a woodshed. Speech perforce is largely arbitrary; if
we speakers take pride in that, it is because in 50,000 years or so of talking we
have learned to make a virtue of necessity. (Hockett 1978: 274–275)

In considerably less time, linguists have elevated features derived from

the study of one type of language, spoken language, to the status of lin-
guistic universals. In doing so, they have committed a cardinal scientific
error: generalizing from a biased data sample. Upon reviewing the evi-
dence from signed languages, Hockett discarded the design feature that
all language is transmitted in the vocal-auditory channel. The data pre-
sented here suggest that it is time for linguists to re-examine the role of
iconicity and gesture in the grammars of signed languages.

Received 4 August 2003 University of New Mexico

Revision received 14 October 2003

Notes
* Author’s e-mail address: [email protected].
1. I cannot thank enough my many colleagues who have helped me with this paper: Larry
Gorbet, Terry Janzen, Paola Pietandrea, Elena Pizzuto, Tommaso Russo, Phyllis Per-
rin Wilcox, and my anonymous reviewer.
2. Notable exceptions include Pizzuto et al. 1995, Cuxac 1996, Engberg-Pedersen 1996,
Cuxac 2000, Pizzuto and Volterra 2000.
3. Kővecses (2000) notes that one folk understanding of anger involves a cognitive model
in which intensity of o¤ense outweighs intensity of retribution creating an imbalance
that causes anger. As a result, a common cross-linguistic metaphorical expression of
anger involves the conceptual metaphor an angry person is a pressurized container.
 Cognitive iconicity and signed languages 143

4. The same iconic-metaphorical expression of intensity occurs in speech. Bolinger (1986:

19) describes what he calls a ‘‘vocalized gesture’’ of delayed release in which the initial
consonant of a word is given extra length and the following vowel is cut short, as in I’d
like to wring his n-n-n-neck! The e¤ect is clearly one of intensification.
5. The temporal dimension of location is quite a bit more complicated than discussed
here. Path movement, for example, may be construed as a change in location (consider
the sign GIVE) when it moves between two or more points. When the movement is
circular (along a circular path), location may be construed as the setting for a move-
ment viewed holistically rather than a change of location (e.g., ALWAYS). Loca-
tion may also be construed as a setting not only in static cases where it is the location
in which a handshape occurs or point towards, but also when a handshape rapidly
changes due to reduplication (tremor or flutter). In the latter case, location has a dy-
namic aspect. See Wilbur (1979: 81–84) for a phonological analysis along these lines.
6. This description might seem to suggest that classifier predicates are only used to express
the motion of physical objects. In fact, these forms can be found in metaphorical and
fictive motion expressions (Taub 2001; Wilcox 2001).
7. The conversation appears in the videotaped ASL series ‘‘ASL across America: Detroit
(Vol. 2)’’ published by Sign Media, Burtonsville, MD, 1989.
8. The reader should be careful not to depend on the grammatical class of the gloss. The
sign is used here not as a full verb form ‘to change’ but as a stative ‘has changed’.
9. The distinction between phonological and phonetic dependency is important. Clearly,
these facial markers can be pronounced independently of the hands, just as the English
plural morpheme -s can be pronounced independently of the stem to which it is bound.
I am claiming only that facial markers are phonological and conceptually dependent.
10. Dively (2001), for example, describes only eight such nonhanded ASL signs; all of them
are highly constrained phonologically (consisting primarily of headnods or headshakes,
some with torso movement and additional facial markers) and semantically, with
meanings such as ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘oh I see’. In addition, her data came from only two
Native American deaf informants, raising the possibility that even these signs are not
widely used throughout the Deaf community.
11. Although, as just noted, facial markings are typically transcribed with overbars, I here
use brackets for typographic simplicity.
12. Significantly, this parallel iconic mapping of autonomous–dependent structure re-
mains, whether the profile determinant of the composite hand–face construction is
the autonomous lexical material (as in examples [1–2]) or the dependent facial marker
(examples [3–4]). The combination of profile determinant and autonomous–dependent
structure has been shown to account for the distinction between head-modifier and
head-complement constructions (Langacker 2000).
13. Evidence that these ASL signs once contained the morpheme ‘one’ comes from two
sources. First, the contemporary LSF signs HIER, DEMAIN, and AVEC are cognates
of the ASL signs and include the morpheme (Cuxac 2000). Second, corresponding
forms are attested in early to middle nineteenth-century LSF.
14. Person-marked location is accompanied by di¤erent movement and hand orientation.

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