Abstract
It has long been recognized that sign language (i) uses the same logical structures as oral language (sometimes bringing out its abstract components), and at the same time (ii) makes more systematic use of iconicity. But the articulation between these two modules has only been examined in a fragmentary way. On the basis of new data from American Sign Language (ASL), we argue that traditional logical semantics must be supplemented by a pictorial component, which makes crucial use of the semantics of images recently developed in philosophy and linguistics (Greenberg, Abusch). The result, which we call " iconological semantics ", offers a new integration of logical semantics and iconic semantics, as well as a new perspective on the foundations of meaning in natural languages. Our analysis also has implications for the syntax of iconic constructions, which sometimes give rise to a specific word order, due in our view to a " iconic syntax ".
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