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Iconicity and Metaphor: Constraints on Metaphorical Extension of Iconic Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Irit Meir
Irit Meir*
Affiliation:
The University of Haifa
*
Department of Hebrew Language and Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders The University of Haifa Haifa, Israel 31905, [imeir@univ.haifa.ac.il]
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Abstract

Some conceptual metaphors common in spoken languages are infelicitous in sign languages. The explanation suggested in this article is that the iconicity of these signs clashes with the shifts in meaning that take place in these metaphorical extensions. Both iconicity and metaphors are built on mappings of two domains: form and meaning in iconicity, source domain and target domain in metaphors. Iconic signs that undergo metaphoric extension are therefore subject to both mappings (Taub 2001). When the two mappings do not preserve the same structural correspondence, the metaphorical extension is blocked. This restriction is formulated as the double-mapping constraint, which requires multiple mappings to be structure-preserving. The effects of this constraint go beyond explaining possible and impossible metaphors in sign languages. Because of the central role of metaphors in various linguistic processes, constraints on their occurrence may affect other linguistic structures and processes that are built on these metaphors in both sign and spoken languages.

Keywords

iconicitymetaphordouble-mappingsign languagesconstraintsmodality

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 865 - 896
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Meir Etdegi, Debbie Menashe, Sara Lanesman, Orna Levy, and Doron Levy for providing the ISL data on which this study is based, and for useful discussions of these data. I am grateful to Carol Padden for very helpful discussions and for providing many of the ASL examples in the article, to Sotaro Kita for helpful discussion of mimetics, and to Greg Carlson, Sali Tagliamonte, Karen Emmorey, and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 8th Theoretical Issues of Sign Language Research conference, Barcelona, September 2004, and at the Second International AFLiCo conference, Lille, May 2007. I thank the participants for their comments and questions. This work was partly supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation no. 553/04 to Irit Meir. Illustrations are copyright © of Sign Language Research Laboratory, University of Haifa.

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