The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 116 docx

Consider once again the VERY-SLOW example. VERY-SLOW is multimor- phemic, consisting of the base morpheme SLOW and a bound, grammatical mor- pheme marking intensification. This bound morpheme is realized as a change in the movement of the base morpheme: an initial hold is followed by the sudden release into a rapid motion. The same morpheme appears on other lexical roots, such as VERY-SMART and VERY-FAST. While it is true, as Klima and Bellugi noted, that the form of VERY-SLOW is incongruent with the meaning of the lexical stem SLOW, it is not true that the form of the intensifier morpheme is in- congruent with its meaning. Intensity is a conceptually dependent notion, relying on a prior conception of what is being intensified: something is ‘very slow’ or ‘very hot’ or ‘very big’ but not simply ‘very’ tout court. In addition, the abstract notion of intensity is often understood metaphorically by reference to more grounded concepts such as the sudden release of pent up pressure. A cognitive analysis shows that the construc- tion VERY-SLOW is iconic in two ways. First, it is iconic because the articulators directly represent the metaphorical conceptualization of intensity as a sudden re- lease of pent up pressure. Second, the nature of intensity as a conceptually depen- dent notion is also iconically represented: change in how a movement is articulated relies on a prior conception of what movement was produced. The derivational morphology data is likewise iconic. The basis for nouns and verbs within Cognitive Linguistics lies in the conceptual distinction of objects and their interactions, captured by the billiard-ball model. Nouns are regions in some domain; Cognitive Grammar uses the term ‘‘thing’’ for the class of nouns. Verbs comprise a series of stative relations (a stative relation being a single, internally consistent configuration) distributed continuously through conceived time, the component states being scanned sequentially by the conceptualizer. This relation is said to comprise a ‘‘process.’’ At the semantic pole, every noun profiles a thing, while every verb profiles a process. Klima and Bellugi (1979: 295–96) describe the formal characteristics of noun- verb pairs in ASL: Both continuous and hold manner occur in the verb signs (a continuous sweep as opposed to a noticeable stop at the end of the movement); the related noun forms show a consistently restricted pattern: they are the same as the verb forms except that they have reduplicated movement and a restrained manner (that is, the muscles are tightened in performing the movement). As a result of the re- strained manner the nouns are typically made with smaller movements than their related verbs. The articulation of ASL noun forms in a restricted region of space motivates their construal as things at the phonological pole. Verb forms make salient in their ar- ticulation motion through space; they are thus construed as processes at their phonological pole. The mapping of phonological thing and process onto semantic thing (noun) and process (verb), respectively, makes these noun-verb forms highly 1120 sherman wilcox iconic, not for the specific meanings of the nouns and verbs they represent but for the grammatical class of noun and verb. Turning to verb aspect, signed languages exhibit a general type of iconic map- ping. The semantic pole of aspectual markers designate situation-internal temporal features such as inception, duration, or completion of an event (Langacker 1972). Aspect is coded phonologically in many signed languages by modifying the sign’s lexical movement. This need not be so; we could logically envision a signed lan- guage in which verb aspect is marked by changing the handshape or the loca- tion parameter. In fact, no known signed language marks verb aspect in this way. Instead, event-internal features of the phonological pole (changes to the temporal profile of the sign’s movement parameter) are mapped onto event-internal tem- poral features of the event encoded in the semantic pole. As Mandel pointed out, it is important to recognize that iconicity and con- ventionality interact. One consequence of this is that iconicity does not imply predictability of form. Within the cognitive iconicity framework, this fact is cap- tured by noting that iconic mappings are not between objective forms and scenes. Rather, they are bipolar mappings of construals. As Langacker (1991: 294) notes: Conceptually, there are countless ways of construing a given event, and a par- ticular event conception might deviate from the canon in any manner or to any degree. An event’s objective properties are consequently insufficient to pre- dict the grammatical structure of a clause describing it. This observation also applies to the conception of signed language articula- tory events. There are countless ways of construing a moving hand: as movement (of an object), as an object (moving), as an instrument (an object performing some functional action such as cutting), as a tracing device (performing virtual depic- tion), and so forth. Just as an event’s objective properties are insufficient to predict the grammatical structure of a clause describing it, the objective properties of visible articulators are insufficient to predict how they may be construed. Because of the bipolar construal of symbolic structures, even highly iconic signs may also exhibit a high degree of arbitrariness. This fact has been documented by Pietrandrea (2002) in the Italian Sign Language (LIS) lexicon. In a study of 1,944 signs, it was found that 50 percent of handshape occurrences and 67 percent of body location occurrences have an iconic motivation. Along with this pervasive iconicity, Pietrandrea found a deep arbitrariness in the LIS lexicon due to the fact that iconic signs exhibit arbitrary selection of different aspects of articulators and referents to convey different meanings. Russo and his colleagues (Russo 1999; Russo, Giurana, and Pizzuto 2001) studied iconic aspects of LIS in poetic, prose, and lecture genres. Russo distin- guished two types of iconicity in these texts: (i) frozen iconicity, that is, those iconic features of signs which appear irrespective of discourse context, and (ii) dynamic iconicity, that is, those iconic features of signs or their sublexical components ‘‘that arise from the meaning they assume in discourse and/or from the relationship they signed languages 1121 entertain with the other signs with which they co-occur’’ (90). Russo found that while frozen iconicity appeared in the lecture data, it was present in poetic texts to a markedly higher degree than in lectures (77 percent vs. 47 percent). Dy- namic iconicity was a distinctive and productively used device in the poems, oc- curring in 53 percent of the constructions analyzed. In contrast, dynamic iconicity played only a minor role in the lecture data, appearing in only 13 percent of the constructions. 4.3. Metaphor Metaphor plays a significant role in the phonology, morphology, and discourse of signed languages. Wilbur (1987) identified several spatialization, ontological, and structural metaphors in ASL. For example, the metaphor happy is up is seen in ASL signs such as CHEERFUL, HAPPY, and EXCITED; negative value is down is present in signs such as LOUSY, IGNORE, and FAIL. Wilbur also described the ontological metaphor the mind is a container using the size-and-shape speci- fier handshape C, commonly used for containers such as cup or glass; when the C-handshape is made on the signer’s forehead, the sign means ‘knowledgeable’. P. Wilcox (2000) demonstrated the complexity of metaphorical mappings in ASL by examining a number of ontological and structural metaphors in detail. The mind is a container metaphor, for example, sanctions a number of extensions including a front-back mapping: consciously known or remembered information is in the front of the head, unconsciously known or remembered information is situated in the back of the head. ASL exhibits a network of metaphorical mappings based on the ideas are objects ontological metaphor (P. Wilcox 2000). The metaphor ideas are objects subject to physical force is seen in signs for ‘forget’ (ideas falling out of the mind-as-container). ideas are objects to be manipulated or placed appears in signs produced with the flat-O handshape, used to manipulate or place physical objects (e.g., ‘put’, ‘give’) and metaphorical objects (‘learn’, ‘move ideas around’, ‘put knowledge into an unconscious thinking area’, and the ASL compound ‘re- member; I’ll mark that in my memory’ signed as PUT-STAY on the forehead). The metaphor ideas are objects to be grasped is seen in a number of spoken languages for concepts related to understanding, as in I get what you mean or Ididn’t fully grasp his argument. Although this metaphor does not map onto understanding in ASL, it is used to motivate expressions in which ideas are remembered (grasping near the forehead) or ideas which were once held firmly in place are released. In the latter, a sign made with the closed fist near the forehead is rapidly opened into an open-5 handshape while simultaneously moving downwards. This sign may be used in a context in which an author who has, over the course of many years, collected a store of Deaf folklore, in a brief period of time documents them in a book. ideas are objects to be grasped is mapped onto understanding in other signed languages. Catalan Sign Language exhibits the metaphor in the sign meaning 1122 sherman wilcox ‘I understand you’: an open-5 handshape moves from a position away from the signer to one near the signer’s head while simultaneously closing into a fist hand- shape. Italian Sign Language has a similar sign, also based on the ideas are objects to be grasped metaphor. The metaphor ideas are objects to be carefully selected uses an F-handshape (index and thumb touching, other fingers extended). This handshape is used for small physical objects such pins or seeds which require special care and attention in their manipulation. In ASL, the sign meaning ‘to carefully select an idea’ is made with this handshape at the forehead, ‘selecting’ one idea from the mind-as-container’s store of ideas (P. Wilcox 2000). A number of signed languages use a time is space metaphor to represent time concepts (S. Wilcox 2002b). Signed languages incorporate space as time in at least two ways: time may be conceptualized as an entity residing at a certain point in space (location in time is location in space), or the continuous flow of time may be conceived as movement through space (flow of time is movement in space). In the first case, ASL and several other signed languages (Klima and Bellugi 1979; Engberg-Pedersen 1993) use various time lines, setting spatial locations along a line to represent points in time. In the latter case, the spatial movement of certain lexical items such as the ASL signs PROGRESS and PROCEED represents move- ment through time (S. Wilcox 2002b). The close relation between language, cognition, and culture is vividly revealed in the metaphorical mappings that occur in signed language poetry. P. Wilcox (2000) analyzes one ASL poem, ‘‘The Dogs’’ by Deaf poet Ella Mae Lentz. In this poem, Lentz describes two dogs, a grizzled mutt and a sophisticated Doberman, tied together by a chain. P. Wilcox found a number of manifestations of the social relations are spatial relations metaphor for describing relations among dif- ferent classes of deaf people (those who use ASL, those who prefer a signed repre- sentation of English, those who are culturally Deaf versus those who are only au- diologically deaf, and so forth), including:  social identity ¼ physical closeness  social constraint ¼ physical constraint  involuntary social unity ¼ involuntary physical connectedness  shared social identity ¼ chain linking two dogs When this poem was shown to Deaf people in other countries with different cultural and historical backgrounds, differing interpretations of the metaphors emerged. Deaf people in Switzerland often saw the two dogs in the poem not as different cultural and linguistic groups within the deaf community but as deaf (the ‘‘mutt’’) and hearing people (the Doberman). Some interpreted the two protag- onists as different aspects of a single deaf person: one dog represented that part of the self that felt hearing, while the other represented their deaf identity. Deaf people in Rome, Italy, interpreted neither of the two dogs as deaf; instead, they saw the poem as a metaphor for different races fighting each other. signed languages 1123 4.4. Metonymy Metonymy is widespread in the lexicons of signed languages. In ASL and Catalan Sign Language, the metonymy prototypical characteristic for whole entity is seen in BIRD (a sign representing the beak) and CAT (representing the whiskers), and specific interaction with prototypical element for whole activity is seen in several Catalan Sign Language forms of DRINK representing the ways dif- ferent types of drink are consumed (e.g., ‘drink beer’ vs. ‘drink brandy’). Metonymy is commonly seen in name signs. In one type of name sign, a pro- minent physical characteristic may be used as the name for a person, as in ‘person with bandage on arm’. Fingerspelling may interact metonymically with name signs: the ASL signs for Chicago, Texas, and Philadelphia are made with a movement resembling the number ‘7’ traced in the air, but are distinguished by using a hand- shape representing a single letter from the written word: C for Chicago, X for Texas, and P for Philadelphia. Some name signs incorporate a more complex blend of metonymies in which a single handshape representing the first letter of the per- son’s written name combines with the location and movement of a sign identify- ing a distinctive quality of the person: Phyllis, for example, might have the name sign combining the handshape ‘P’ with the location and movement of the sign for ‘music’ to indicate that she loves music. Catalan Sign Language uses a set of metonymies to represent physical con- sequence for degree of the perceptual quality: CRAZY-EYES for ‘really good’, OPEN-MOUTH for ‘astonishment’, and SEIZURE for ‘incredible’. Italian Sign Lan- guage uses a similar metonymy in the sign JAW-STRAIN meaning ‘make an effort’. Metonymy is often found in morphologically related noun-verb pairs in ASL. For example, metonymy relates the verb PUT-OBJECT-IN-MOUTH ‘eat’ to the noun ‘food’; activity for instrument metonymy relates the verb MOVE- FINGERS ‘type’ to its noun form ‘typewriter’. P. Wilcox (2000) describes a cumulative metaphonymy in ASL in the sign THINK-HEARING, a derogatory sign referring to a person who is audiologically deaf but accepts uncritically the ideology of the hearing world (Padden and Hum- phries 1988). The sign HEARING is normally produced at the mouth, metony- mically representing the activity of speaking (‘hearing people’ are thus conceptu- alized as ‘those who speak’). In THINK-HEARING, this sign is moved upward and signed at the forehead, indicating that the person is ‘hearing in the mind’. 4.5. Summary The picture that emerges from the study of iconicity, metaphor, and metonymy in signed languages is that these tropes interact in quite complex ways, whether we examine spontaneous discourse or artistic genres. The overriding presence of ico- nicity is undeniable. Metaphor and iconicity are often simultaneously present, but analysis reveals that in many of these cases, iconicity depends on a logically prior metaphorical mapping. 1124 sherman wilcox 4.6. Mental Space and Blends Liddell (2000) has explored the concept of blended mental spaces (Fauconnier and Turner 1996) at it applies to ASL. Liddell argues that signed language discourse makes use of spontaneous gestures, distinguishable from lexical signs, that convey meanings such as are conveyed by gesture in spoken language discourse. He goes on to suggest that signed languages differ from spoken languages in having developed mechanisms that allow the gestural component to combine with linguistic aspects of signs. Liddell (1998) describes grounded blends in ASL resulting from the blending of elements from a mental space with elements of the signer’s immediate physical environment. Liddell demonstrates that grounded blends often incorporate the conceptual scene from a nongrounded space, projecting that onto the current physical setting. In ASL discourse, for example, if the signer is one of the blended elements, first-person pronouns no longer refer to the speaker but to the conceptual element blended with the speaker. 5. Gesture Until recently, the prevailing view among linguists has been that language and gesture are categorically distinct systems. For example, Chomsky (1972: 70) claims that while it may be possible to find a direct link between human gesture and animal communication, human language is based on principles entirely different from either. Recent research on gesture does not support such a claim. Scholars such as Kendon (1972, 1980), Calbris (1985, 1990), McNeill (1985, 1992, 2000), and Duncan (2002) have explored the deep links between gesture and language. On the basis of this work, McNeill (1992: 23) has concluded that ‘‘gestures and speech should be viewed within a unified conceptual framework as aspects of a single underlying process.’’ 5.1. Definitions A number of definitions of gesture have been offered in the literature. Kendon (2000) uses the term ‘‘gesture’’ to refer to a range of visible bodily actions produced as part of a person’s willing expression. This definition excludes from gesture unintentional expressions of affect and behaviors such as posture, postural shifting, and direction of gaze, which Kendon sees as part of the way in which participants in interaction establish and maintain their orientations to each other. Kendon (1988) described an ordering of gestures, which McNeill (1992) has dubbed ‘‘Kendon’s continuum’’: Gesticulation ? Language-like Gestures ? Pantomimes ? Emblems ? Sign Languages signed languages 1125 McNeill (1992: 37) notes that as we move from left to right along this gestural continuum, (i) the obligatory presence of speech declines, (ii) the presence of lan- guage properties increases, and (iii) idiosyncratic gestures are replaced by socially regulated signs. McNeill limits his use of the term ‘‘gestures’’ to the gesticulation end of the continuum. In his view, gestures are ‘‘idiosyncratic spontaneous movements of the hands and arms accompanying speech’’ (1992: 37). In distin- guishing the visible movements of a speaker into gesture and nongesture, McNeill notes that the latter comprise self-touching (e.g., stroking the hair) and object manipulation. Armstrong, Stokoe, and Wilcox (1995) take a broader view of gesture, defining it, after Studdert-Kennedy (1987: 77), as a functional unit, ‘‘an equivalence class of coordinated movements that achieve some end (Armstrong, Stokoe, and Wilcox 1995: 43). There are three motivations for this more inclusive definition of gesture. First, it permits us to categorize together the movements that psychologists and phoneticians regard as the components of speech (Neisser 1967; Browman and Goldstein 1989) with cospeech gestures and signed languages. Second, by not spec- ifying that gestures must be intentionally produced or communicative, it allows the study of how unintentional, noncommunicative movements which happen to be informative about future actions come to have communicative significance (Krebs and Davies 1993). Third, researchers such as King (2004) report that such an ap- proach to gesture permits the discovery of how gestural communication emerges in the nonvocal social communication of African great apes. 5.2. Types of Gesture One type of gesture that is widely recognized across cultures has come to be called the emblem. According to McNeill (1992: 56), emblems are part of a social code but are not fully structured as language. They have names or standard paraphrases, are learned as specific gestural symbols, and can be used to substitute for spoken words or phrases. An example of an emblem is the so-called Hand Purse, produced by holding the hand upright with the fingers and thumb pressed together at the tips. The Hand Purse has several meanings, including ‘query’ (in Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily), ‘good’ (Portugal, Greece, and Turkey), ‘fear’ (Belgium and France), and ‘emphasis’ (Holland and Germany). Morris et al. (1979) describe 20 emblems in use across Europe. Kendon (1981 ) notes that although emblems are complete speech acts, they are limited in their function: they regulate and comment on behavior, reveal one’s emotional state, make promises, swear oaths, and function to com- mand, request, reply to a challenge, insult, threaten, or express fear. They do not, however, function referentially to signify objects or events. McNeill (1992) identifies four basic types of gestures: iconic, metaphorical, deictic, and beat. Iconic gestures bear a close formal relationship to the semantic content of speech, depicting in their form and manner of production some aspect of the same scene that is expressed in the co-occurring speech. McNeill (1992: 78) 1126 sherman wilcox offers the example of a gesture that accompanies the utterance He tries going up inside the pipe this time in which the hand rises upward. Metaphorical gestures also depict an image, but the image is of an abstract concept such as knowledge or language. An example is a gesture presenting the concept of a question as a cupped hand. As McNeill points out, metaphorical ges- tures are related to iconic gestures, in that they both present images. Deictic gestures are pointing movements. They are typically made with a pointing finger, but any extensible body part can be used, such as the chin or lips, as well as nonbody objects such as a pencil. McNeill notes that deictic gestures produced during spoken narrative rarely point to concrete entities. Rather, they select a part of the gesture space, and their meaning depends on a prior referential value that has been attached to this space. McNeill defines beats as movements that do not present a discernible mean- ing. Beats typically are composed of two movement components consisting of small, low energy, rapid movements of the fingers or hand. The meaning of a beat gesture lies not in its referential value, but merely in indicating that something is significant because of its relation to the overall discourse. For example, a beat may accompany the first mention of an important character in a narrative dis- course. Calbris (1990) takes a more semiotic approach to the study of gesture. Although the focus of her work is coverbal gestures, she does not limit the range of gesture quite as much as do Kendon or McNeill. For Calbris, coverbal gesturing may in- clude ‘‘expressive gestures’’ as well as facial expressions. Calbris describes her work as ‘‘more semantic than pragmatic, addressing the significance of gestures more than their interactive role’’ (xv). Her focus is more on the internal symbolic analysis of gestures, which allows her to discover and describe subtle nuances of the semantic field of gestures. For example, Calbris explores the inherent conceptual symbolism of circular, straight-line, and curved movements; combinations of movements such as forward loops, hands turning around each other, or a circle repeated on itself in a horizontal plane; and several cases of complex gestures such as movement and configuration (e.g., fist forward, palm outward, or thumb and forefinger joined in pincers). Because of her careful study of gestural semantics, Calbris is able to discover a range of polysemy in her data. This leads her to propose two types of polysemy in the French gestural system: In the first [type] (a), the link between the signifier and the signified is unique, while the signified is subject to semantic shifts: there is no single motivation. In the second type (b), there are multiple links associating one or more of the signify- ing elements of the gesture with one or more signifieds: the motivation is plural. (1990: 207) Calbris suggests that the polysemy of a singly motivated gesture, her type (a), is explained by semantic shifting: ‘‘The gesture takes on new meanings as the meaning of the signified passes from literal to figurative, from concrete to abstract, from the signed languages 1127 spatial to the temporal world, from the physical to the psychological level, from a particular domain to everyday life’’ (1990: 207). Plural motivation is explained by the rich symbolism in the physical signifier. Along with the prevailing view that gestures and language are distinct systems is the assumption that gestures are merely ‘‘nonverbal’’ accompaniments to speech, adding little or no distinct information of their own to the overall utterance. The evidence from research on gesture refutes this assumption. Calbris also concludes that it would be erroneous to regard gesture as merely illustrating or substituting for speech. Instead, she suggests that gesture adds complementary information to that given in the spoken utterance. In this way, she suggests, speech and gesture together function in a type of topic-comment relation: ‘‘Gestures comment on utterance’’ (1990: 209). 6. Gesture and Grammaticization in Signed Languages Grammaticization operates in signed languages as it does in spoken languages. The source for the agentive suffix in ASL, for example, was the lexical form meaning ‘body’ signed by touching the torso with two open hands, first on the chest and then on the abdomen. At the turn of the twentieth century, the sign meaning ‘teacher’ appears to have been a compound of TEACHþBODY. Over time, the form became phonetically reduced. The contemporary sign for teacher consists of the sign TEACH, made by moving two flat-O handshapes outward from the head (metaphorically ‘transfer ideas from me to you’), and the agentive suffix, made by slightly opening and dropping the hands. The unreduced, older form BODY remains in the ASL lexicon. In the case of signed languages, grammaticization may be extended to account for the development of lexical and grammatical material, both manual and facial, Figure 42.1. American Sign Language sign MUST (Humphries, Padden, and O’Rourke 1980) 1128 sherman wilcox from gestural sources. Wilcox and Wilcox (1995) described a set of modal forms in ASL that trace a path from gesture to lexicon to grammar. The modal form CAN indicating possibility and ability had as its source the lexical morpheme STRONG. The ASL evidential forms SEEM, FEEL, and OBVIOUS grammaticized from lexical morphemes MIRROR, FEEL (used in the physical sense), and BRIGHT, respec- tively. Each of these lexical morphemes can be traced in turn to a gestural source. Thus, the full developmental path for these forms is:  [gesture enacting upper body strength] ? STRONG ? CAN  [gesture enacting looking in a mirror] ? MIRROR ? SEEM  [gesture enacting physically sensing with finger] ? FEEL (physical) ? FEEL (evidential)  [metaphorical gesture indicating rays of light] ? BRIGHT ? OBVIOUS Shaffer (2002) notes that the ASL deontic modal MUST (figure 42.1) is related to the French Sign Language IL FAUT ‘it is necessary’ (figure 42.2). IL FAUT is also attested in mid-nineteenth-century French Sign Language (figure 42.3). It appears likely that these forms derive from a gesture used as early as Roman times to signal obligation. Dodwell (2000: 36) discusses a gesture (figure 42.4) that he classifies an imperative: ‘‘It consists of directing the extended index finger towards the ground.’’ The gesture was described by Quintilian in the first century AD: ‘‘when directed towards the ground, this finger insists’’ (Dodwell 2000: 36). Janzen and Shaffer (2002) identify the source of the ASL future morpheme as an ancient, pan-Mediterranean gesture (de Jorio 2000). The gesture is still in use among hearing people in the Mediterranean region to signal departure-demand and departure-description (Morris et al. 1979). The gesture also appears in the 1855 lexicon of French Sign Language (Brouland 1855) as the lexical morpheme PARTIR ‘depart’. Grammaticization also accounts for the emergence of modal and evidential forms from gestural sources in Catalan Sign Language (S. Wilcox 2002a). The Catalan Sign Language forms EVIDENT ‘obvious’, CLAR ‘clear’, PRESENTIR ‘have a feeling, have a premonition’, and SEMBLAR ‘seem’, which have physical Figure 42.2. Contemporary French Sign Language sign IL FAUT (Girod 1997 ) signed languages 1129 . represented that part of the self that felt hearing, while the other represented their deaf identity. Deaf people in Rome, Italy, interpreted neither of the two dogs as deaf; instead, they saw the poem. the movement). As a result of the re- strained manner the nouns are typically made with smaller movements than their related verbs. The articulation of ASL noun forms in a restricted region of. predict the grammatical structure of a clause describing it, the objective properties of visible articulators are insufficient to predict how they may be construed. Because of the bipolar construal of