In an attempt to understand certain similarities across sign languages , some interesting suggestions have been made about the role of iconicity (transparent correspondence between form and meaning) in shaping sign language grammar . Such a possibility runs counter to the by now traditional view that grammatical structure and iconicity are mutually exclusive. This more traditional view assumed, with Saussure (1959), that the elements of language , to be language, must be arbitrary. Therefore, it was assumed to follow that whatever is iconic about sign language is not “ linguistic .” Nowadays, however, there is such an abundance of solid evidence that sign languages are real linguistic systems in every sense of the word, that it is possible to take a fresh look at the whole issue. Allowing for the possibility that iconicity contributes to grammatical structure in sign language opens the door to the possibility that general cognitive concepts – such as spatial relations among refe...
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