Iconicity refers to the degree to which a symbol or representation resembles the object or concept it signifies. In other words, it's the extent to which the form of a symbol reflects its meaning. For example, a drawing of a heart representing love is considered iconic because the shape of the heart resembles the organ associated with emotions and affection.

1. ICONICITY
What is Iconicity?
Icon means a sign in strict sense of the word.
“The way in which grammatical organization mirrors
experience is called iconicity.”
The principle of iconicity challenges the monopoly of
arbitrariness.
Saussure’s principle of the ‘‘arbitrariness of the linguistic
sign stated that there was nothing ‘‘X-like’’ about a word
‘‘X’’ in any given language. The form and meaning of a word
were regarded as independent of each other.
The notion of iconicity assumes that a number of linguistic
structures reflect the world’s structure and not the brain’s.
In general, there is iconicity if something in the form of a
sign reflects something in the world (normally through a
mental operation).

2. ICONICITY
Symbol, Index and Icon?
“A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it
denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of
general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to be
interpreted as referring to that Object.’’
‘‘An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that it
denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object’’.
There is a kind of causal relationship between the index
and the object; for example, smoke is an index of fire.
‘‘An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it
denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and
which it possesses, just the same, whether any such
Object actually exists or not’’.

3. ICONICITY
Kinds of Icons:
“The image is the prototype of an icon. It is a simple sign
that resembles its referent by virtue of sensory
characteristics. These may be visual.’’
‘‘A metaphor, in Peirce’s view, brings out the
representative character of a sign by representing a
parallelism in something else.”
‘‘An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it
denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and
which it possesses, just the same, whether any such
Object actually exists or not’’.

4. ICONICITY
Iconicity on the Phonic Level:
“On the phonic level, we primarily find
imagic iconicity, which is well known as
onomatopoeia.” E.g crack, squeak, hiss,
hush.
cock-a-doodle-doo (English), kukeleku
(Dutch), kikeriki (German), cocorico (French),
kukareku (Russian)
Moreover, diagrammatic iconicity is rather
limited on the phonic level because it is hard
to assign meanings to sounds as such.

5. ICONICITY
Diagrammatic Iconicity on the Morphological Level:
“On the morphological level, we find iconicity to various degrees in
the inflectional endings of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and, further,
in the markedness relation between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’.
Iconicity has mostly to do with markedness. This concept is often
captured in the slogan ‘‘The more form, the more meaning.’’ The
more (marked) complex the form of a sign (or of a constellation of
signs), the more (marked) complex the meaning will be. Book book-
s, girl girl-s
As a human being, the speaker has certain biological, psychological
(perceptual), and cultural properties that can be called prototypical.
These prototypical properties are reflected in language as unmarked
semantic categories and tend to be acquired first by children.
Examples include positive-negative, Agent-Patient, topic-
comment, and subject-object.

6. ICONICITY
Diagrammatic Iconicity on the Morphological Level:
it is natural that ‘positive’ will be semantically unmarked with
respect to ‘negative’. It is raining versus It is not raining; happy vs
un-happy. animate vs. in-animate, honest vs. dis-honest,
entangle vs. dis-entangle, sense vs. non-sense.
From an experiential perspective, the singular is semantically
unmarked since the prototypical speaker is a single person, not a
chorus. Also, it is easier to perceive or, more generally, to deal with
one object at a time than with several. Book book-s, girl girl-s
The feature ‘definite’ appears to be unmarked with respect to
‘indefinite’. Prototypical speakers are ‘‘definite’’ in the sense that
they are presupposed to exist and to be unique (e.g., John, Mary,
Paris; I, you, he, she, it).
Since the prototypical speaker is human by definition, the feature
‘human’ will be unmarked vis-a`-vis ‘nonhuman’. Human-animal-s

7. ICONICITY
Diagrammatic Iconicity on the Morphological Level:
Finally, with regard to gender, it is found that in most cultures the
prototypical speaker is a man, not a woman, count vs. count-ess,
prince vs. princ-ess.
The present tense is semantically unmarked with respect to the past
e.g. talk-talk-ed, talked, I work - I work-ed.
Looking at adjectives, we typically find iconicity in the expression of
the degrees of comparison. the comparative is more marked than
the positive degree and often the superlative is more marked than
the comparative, e.g. tall<tall-er<tall-est.
the first adjective in such pairs as big—small, tall—short, long—
short, thick—thin, high—low can be explained in the same way, an
expected and even desirable property of the prototypical speaker
and of nature in general seems to be to grow and expand, not to
shrink.

8. ICONICITY
Iconicity of Distance (or Closeness) in Syntactic Patterns:
‘‘The distance between expressions corresponds to the conceptual
distance between the ideas they represent.’’
Conjunction reduction
a. We can do it quickly and well. (single circumstance)
b. We can do it quickly and we can do it well. (two sets of conditions)
Verbs of perceptions: a. I hear him sing; b) I hear that he sings
In the that-clause, we have two propositions that can differ in terms
of tense and modality
Causative construction:
a. I killed the chicken. b. I caused the chicken to die.
Direct causation implies a unity of action, volition, place, and time:
the event is one Gestalt.
CLOSENESS IS STRENGTH METAPHOR
(a) Sam killed Harry.///(b) Sam made Harry die.//(c) Sam caused
Harry to die.//(d) Sam brought it about that Harry died.

9. ICONICITY
Iconicity of Distance (or Closeness) in Syntactic
Patterns:
Distance iconicity affects the expression of certain
grammatical relations. By definition, prepositional
objects show a greater physical distance with the
verb than direct objects.
a. He smeared the wall with paint.
b. He smeared paint on the wall.
In the so-called holistic reading of (a), the whole wall
is painted whereas this is normally not the case in
(b), where a ‘partial’ reading is most likely.

10. ICONICITY
word-order iconicity:
closeness in time
word-order iconicity is found in the ordering of events in narrative
sequences, which tends to reflect closeness in time. In a narrative
sequence utterance 2 follows utterance 1, just like event 2 follows
event 1.
a. She married and got pregnant.
However, Subordinating conjunctions with a particular meaning may
undo the iconic order, as in (a), whereas others are subject to a fixed
iconic order, as in (b) and (c):
a. She got pregnant after she married.
b. He ran too hard so (that) he fell down.
c. *So (that) he fell down he ran too hard.

11. ICONICITY
word-order iconicity: closeness to the speaker.
What is nearest to the speaker in a literal (physical) or in a
metaphorical sense is mentioned first, especially again in asyndetic
or in fixed coordinate structures.
here and there, this and that, now and then, sooner or later.
We also find metaphorical closeness to the prototypical speaker.
happy or unhappy, yes or no, big and small, tall and short, a man or
a mouse, husband and wife, this and something else.
closeness in content: 1. the principle of head proximity
the principle whereby a modifier is put as closely as possible to its
head. One effect of this principle is the tendency for objects to
accompany the verb they depend on or for adjectives to accompany
the noun by which they are governed.
Little girl, good person, three books, those people

12. ICONICITY
word-order iconicity:
Relative Adjacency.
The modifiers that are closest to the head in content are generally
placed closest to it as well.
those three nice little white wooden dolls.
Three dolls, nice dolls, white dolls, little dolls, wooden dolls
We see that the qualifying adjectives appear closer to the noun than
the quantifying modifiers. absolute objective qualities like wooden
and white are closest to the noun, then objective qualities (size, e.g.,
little) are expressed farther away from the noun, and subjective
qualities like nice and then the determiner

13. ICONICITY
word-order iconicity:
Relator in the Middle (RIM).
An example of the typical ordering in coordination whereby a
coordinator is placed between the elements it conjoins, as in
John and Mary
Coordinative and subordinative relators
Coordinative relators include coordinating conjunctions, such as and
subordinative relators are predicative and nonpredicative relators.
Predicative relators are verbs and other predicates such as
John loves Marry
Nonpredicative relators include adpositions such as (preposition,
post position, ambiposition, circumposition)
The girl (is) in the garden.

14. ICONICITY
word-order iconicity:
Relator in the Middle (RIM).
word-order iconicity appears to be constituted by
one general principle of closeness (or, alternatively,
distance), under which come various sub-principles.
Three kinds of closeness have been reviewed:
closeness of events in narrative sequence, closeness
to the prototypical speaker or to the speakers as a
physical entity, and finally, closeness in content.

15. ICONICITY
Thank you