Title: Language from the body : iconicity and metaphor in American Sign Language /
Authors: Taub, Sarah F., 1968-
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 2001
Subjects: American Sign Language.; Iconicity (Linguistics); Metaphor.
Abstract: "Signed languages are full of iconic linguistic items: words, inflections, and even syntactic constructions with structural similarities between their physical form and their referents' form. Iconic items can have concrete meanings and also abstract meanings through conceptual metaphors. Language from the Body relates iconicity and metaphor in a cognitivist framework, shows how iconic and metaphorical items are central to normal language use, and demonstrates that these items can only be understood properly through a cognitivist or related approach in which meaning can influence form."--Jacket.
Contents: A glimpse of the material -- Motivation and linguistic theory -- Iconicity defined and demonstrated -- The analogue-building model of linguistic iconicity -- Survey of iconicity in signed and spoken languages -- Metaphor in American Sign Language: the double mapping -- Many metaphors in a single sign -- The vertical scale as source domain -- Verb agreement paths in American Sign Language -- Complex superposition of metaphors in an American Sign Language poem -- The future of signed-language research.