The contribution of lexical overlap to perceived iconicity in foreign signs
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2018-08-31
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en
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This study examines the role of phonological overlap in perceived iconicity in a foreign sign language. Signers of Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal; NGT) were shown pairs of signs for the same concept, from both NGT and Chinese Sign Language (CSL). For each pair, they were asked to rate how iconic signs were. Sign pairs were selected on the basis of phonological overlap as measured by an adapted Levenshtein calculation.
In examining the results, phonological overlap was a significant predictor of how iconic signers judged CSL signs to be. CSL signs that had high overlap with their NGT translation equivalent were rated as more iconic than signs that had low overlap.
These results have both theoretical implications, for investigating the subjective nature of iconicity, as well as practical implications, for understanding phenomena such as cross-language communication among signers.
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