The notion that the form of a word bears an arbitrary relation to its meaning accounts only
partly for the attested relations between form and meaning in the languages of the world …

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We
review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an …

Iconic words and signs are characterized by a perceived resemblance between aspects of
their form and aspects of their meaning. For example, in English, iconic words include peep …

Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed
languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant …

It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of
words is essentially arbitrary—typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning …

Our understanding of the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language has traditionally
been firmly based on spoken Indo-European languages and on language studied as …

Signed languages exhibit iconicity (resemblance between form and meaning) across their
vocabulary, and many non-Indo-European spoken languages feature sizable classes of …

Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of
language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic …

Linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence is presented to support the use of structure-
map** theory as a framework for understanding effects of iconicity on sign language …

The view put forward here is that visual bodily signals play a core role in human
communication and the coordination of minds. Critically, this role goes far beyond referential …