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Article published In: Where do nouns come from?
Edited by John B. Haviland
[Gesture 13:3] 2013
► pp. 287–308

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Patterned iconicity in sign language lexicons

 | University of California, San Diego
 | University of Haifa, Israel
Published online: 21 July 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.13.3.03pad
Iconicity is an acknowledged property of both gesture and sign language. In contrast to the familiar definition of iconicity as a correspondence between individual forms and their referents, we explore iconicity as a shared property among groups of signs, in what we call patterned iconicity. In this paper, we focus on iconic strategies used by hearing silent gesturers and by signers of three unrelated sign languages in an elicitation task featuring pictures of hand-held manufactured tools. As in previous gesture literature, we find that silent gesturers largely prefer a handling strategy, though some use an instrument strategy, in which the handshape represents the shape of the tool. There are additional differences in use of handling and instrument strategies for hand-held tools across the different sign languages, suggesting typological differences in iconic patterning. Iconic patterning in each of the three sign languages demonstrates how gestural iconic resources are organized in the grammars of sign languages.
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2015. Iconicity in English and Spanish and Its Relation to Lexical Category and Age of Acquisition. PLOS ONE 10:9 ► pp. e0137147 ff. DOI logo
Börstell, Carl & Ryan Lepic
2014. Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998). Sign Language & Linguistics 17:2 ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Börstell, Carl & Ryan Lepic
2025. Non-signers favor two-handed gestures when expressing inherently plural meanings. Linguistics Vanguard DOI logo
Hunsicker, Dea & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2013. How handshape type can distinguish between nouns and verbs in homesign. Gesture 13:3 ► pp. 354 ff. DOI logo
Hunsicker, Dea & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2015. How handshape type can distinguish between nouns and verbs in homesign. In Where do nouns come from? [Benjamins Current Topics, 70], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective [Gesture Studies, 9], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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