New Books in Language cover image

Philippe Schlenker, "What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything" (MIT Press, 2022)

New Books in Language

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Theoretical Contribution of Sign Language

American Sign Language is basically the same abstract radical and logical structure structure that you find in in spoken languages, but with a much more systematic use of iconicity. Can you give an example of that? In American Sign Language, there is a conventional word grow, like if you say my group grew, and you can also add an adverb which means essentially a lot. The sign will become larger, or the sign will be produced more quickly. If you refer to a growth phenomenon that led to a larger growth, or that correspondent to a faster growth. So this is a case in which there's a conventional component. And there is also an iconic component in the same time.

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