ULAB Essay Competition 2021 Winning Entry
ULAB ESSAY COMPET Andrew Tobin (University of Edinburgh, 4th Year, Linguistics MA)
Iconicity as an Explanation for Linguistic Universals T
he linguistic features of the world’s languages appear both diverse, and arbitrary: the English word hand, the Mandarin shǒu, and the Swahili mkono show no similarity to each other, nor are their forms similar to the real-life form of the body part they refer to. This arbitrariness is considered a defining feature of human language[1]. However, there are also linguistic forms widely recognised as iconic — resembling in some ways the properties of their referent. Lexical onomatopoeia (e.g., bang) are a well-known type of iconicity, but in spoken languages iconicity is also widespread in morphosyntax[2]. Iconicity is notable for being pervasive in a variety of linguistic universals, features shared by many or all of the world’s languages. Explanations for linguistic universals are traditionally divided into two camps. Formalists view the diversity of language as being restricted by innate constraints on how we are able to learn language (Universal Grammar). Functionalists view universals as arising due to the functional advantage those features provide in the production, perception, or learning of language. Iconicity (along with various other aspects of communication such as pragmatics, discourse structure, and processing efficiency) is one of these functional pressures[3]. In this essay, I will explore the case for iconic explanations for a range of linguistic universals. As a functional pressure, as opposed to an innate constraint, many iconicity-based universals are statistical universals (also known as tendencies) — a term used variously to describe features that are present in almost all languages[4], the majority of languages[5], or simply in more languages than would be expected by chance[3]. I will begin by discussing some proposed iconicity-based universals in morphosyntax and phonology, followed by an exploration of iconicitybased universals specific to the signed modality, and finally discuss
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various limitations on iconicity as a potential source of universals. In morphosyntax, iconicity typically involves the ordering or closeness of morphemes reflecting the ordering or conceptual closeness of the real life concepts those morphemes represent. Iconic motivations have been proposed for several fundamental morphosyntactic universals, including the ordering of inflectional and derivational affixes, the ordering of noun modifiers, morphosyntactic alignment, and the ordering of subject and object. The first of these — ordering of inflectional and derivational affixes — is Universal 28 in Joseph Greenberg’s influential list of language universals[6]. This universal states that if both types of affixes are on the same side of the root, derivational affixes will be closer to the root than inflectional ones. For example, in English writers, the agent noun derivation -er is closer to the root than the plural inflection -s. This has been described by Bybee[7] as a consequence of an iconic principle whereby elements that are closer in relevance to the stem (such as derivational affixes which often substantially change the lexical meaning) will appear closer to the stem than less relevant elements (such as inflection, which typically does not affect the core lexical meaning). Iconic universal #1: If both affixes are on the same side of the root, derivational affixes will be closer to the root than inflectional affixes. This iconic influence of semantic closeness on syntactic closeness also reveals itself in another universal, relating to the ordering of different types of noun modifiers. Overwhelmingly, languages of the
