David F. Armstrong and Sherman E. Wilcox
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195163483
- eISBN:
- 9780199867523
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195163483.003.0006
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter examines evidence for the ubiquity of iconicity in signed languages, a consequence of their transmission in the visual medium. Adopting a cognitive grammar framework, the iconic ...
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This chapter examines evidence for the ubiquity of iconicity in signed languages, a consequence of their transmission in the visual medium. Adopting a cognitive grammar framework, the iconic representation of space and time in signed languages is described. Iconicity is understood not as a relation between language and the external world, but as a mapping within multidimensional conceptual space, between the semantic and phonological poles of a symbol. This mapping can vary in distance from one of identity or self-symbolization, in which the thing represents itself, to one of iconicity, in which the semantic and phonological poles reside in roughly the same conceptual space.Less
This chapter examines evidence for the ubiquity of iconicity in signed languages, a consequence of their transmission in the visual medium. Adopting a cognitive grammar framework, the iconic representation of space and time in signed languages is described. Iconicity is understood not as a relation between language and the external world, but as a mapping within multidimensional conceptual space, between the semantic and phonological poles of a symbol. This mapping can vary in distance from one of identity or self-symbolization, in which the thing represents itself, to one of iconicity, in which the semantic and phonological poles reside in roughly the same conceptual space.
Steven Horst
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262015257
- eISBN:
- 9780262295741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262015257.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter presents an alternative analysis and critique of Empiricism, one not rooted in Nancy Cartwright's groundbreaking work. Although Cartwright's critique is an important contribution to the ...
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This chapter presents an alternative analysis and critique of Empiricism, one not rooted in Nancy Cartwright's groundbreaking work. Although Cartwright's critique is an important contribution to the philosophy of science, her arguments have not garnered universal acceptance. Many of her critics claim to have difficulty understanding what she is arguing at all, and some interpret her in significantly different ways from what has been suggested in this book thus far. The author also proposes a formulation of a “causal” account of laws that is somewhat different from Cartwright's, one which employs a cognitivist framework for understanding what laws are in the business of doing. It is also argued that some of Cartwright's statements echo certain of the assumptions of the Empiricists she is criticizing—assumptions which we would do better to abandon.Less
This chapter presents an alternative analysis and critique of Empiricism, one not rooted in Nancy Cartwright's groundbreaking work. Although Cartwright's critique is an important contribution to the philosophy of science, her arguments have not garnered universal acceptance. Many of her critics claim to have difficulty understanding what she is arguing at all, and some interpret her in significantly different ways from what has been suggested in this book thus far. The author also proposes a formulation of a “causal” account of laws that is somewhat different from Cartwright's, one which employs a cognitivist framework for understanding what laws are in the business of doing. It is also argued that some of Cartwright's statements echo certain of the assumptions of the Empiricists she is criticizing—assumptions which we would do better to abandon.
