Cool talk by @greg_woodin (w/ @MarcusPerlman @BodoWinter) colleagues on the connections between metaphor, gesture, iconicity & mental sensorimotor simulations #Protolang
Iconicity, e.g. in the form of sound symbolism is pervasive in the lexicon. Iconicity can also help ground symbols via sensorimotor simulation (e.g., representing what it means for something to be a 'tree'). We also find interactions of word processing with specific brain areas
How can sensorimotor simulation manifest in iconic expressions? Looking at gestures suggests that when we think about actions, premotor activation can spill over into iconic signals as well as more deliberately when there is a need/goal to communicate perceptual details
These two mechanisms can then give rise to improvised iconic signals across modalities (gestures, nonling, vocalisations, phonetic modifications etc). However, systematic lang change and conventionalisation can sever iconicity, the older words are the less iconicity they retain.
This is a nice proposal for a mechanism that integrates iconicity into languages, as new one-off vocalisations are integrated into the lexicon, and become entrenched as iconic words. This process helps maintain levels of iconicity in linguistic systems.
@greg_woodin @MarcusPerlman @BodoWinter #Protolang7 messed up the hashtag whoops 😏
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