Iconicity

Given the sheer iconicity of X-wings, it is understandable why LEGO placed this price tag on the product.

As a result, iconicity as a whole was largely neglected in research of sign languages.

Even so, in ASL iconicity plays a significant role; a high percentage of signs resemble their referents in some way.

Frishberg (1975) wrote a very influential paper addressing the relationship between arbitrariness and iconicity in ASL.

It has also been found that iconicity of signs does not affect immediate memory and recall; less iconic signs are remembered just as well as highly iconic signs.

It has been found that when children acquire the pronoun "you", the iconicity of the point (at the child) is often confused, being treated more like a name. citation This is a similar finding to research in oral languages on pronoun acquisition.

She concluded that though originally present in many signs, iconicity is degraded over time through the application of grammatical processes.

Taub (2001) In this view, iconicity is grounded in a language user's mental representation (" construal " in Cognitive Grammar ).

The cognitive linguistics perspective rejects a more traditional definition of iconicity as a relationship between linguistic form and a concrete, real-world referent.

The iconicity and symbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and, are on that ground in relation with each other.

While iconicity is more systematic and widespread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical.