The general goal of this thesis is to elucidate children’s early understandings of pictorial meanings, and how one can know anything about them. My central aim is to explore how picture comprehension develops during children’s first 3 years of life, through semiotic-theory-derived analyses of meaning relations. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the study of both semiotic theory’s psychological basis and the role of semiotic processes in cognitive development: specifically, in children’s experiences of pictorial meanings. In an experimental object retrieval test, including pictures, I show the importance of studying concrete instances of children’s experiences. Among its key results is that, for a group of children who are close to the threshold of being able to use the picture to solve the retrieval task, indexical cuing assists their understanding.  One central claims is that the picture sign reflects a dual semiotic process: on the one hand, picture understanding relies on recognition of perceptual similarities; on the other, it draws on communicative processes that are intrinsic to all sign constructions. This duality is particularly interesting when it comes to looking at children’s development of picture understanding. Through similarity relations, children perceive accurate – but initially private, and semiotically premature – understanding of pictures. At the same time though, children are alert to communicative meanings from the start. / Språk, gester och bilder i ett semiotiskt utvecklingsperspektiv / Centrum för kognitiv semiotik

Saurssure argues that the relationship between form and meaning in language is arbitrary, but sound symbolism theory argues that there are forms in language that can develop non-arbitrary association with meanings. This thesis proposes that there is a sound symbolic association between consonants and action words. To be more specific, a stop sound is likely to be associated with the action of percussion and a continuant sound with continuing movements. Evidence for such an association was found through three empirical studies. The findings of two experiments revealed that such an association is motivated by the gestures when pronouncing the consonants and by their phonetic features. A study of the verbs in Teochew dialect also revealed a similar sound symbolic association existing in the colloquial language. This thesis was conducted to direct attention to the use of empirical methods to investigate sound symbolism in real language. / 2015-10-03

O trabalho em questão investiga o conceito de estrutura enquanto representação icônica de idéias simples e complexas (na forma dos elementos das histórias em quadrinhos) e sua ocorrência em cartilhas de treinamento vertidas nessa linguagem gráfica. A pesquisa busca elucidar se haveria na linguagem dos quadrinhos um conjunto de unidades visuais mínimas de significação cujo caráter universal permitiria uma decifração intuitiva dos seus códigos, tornando a comunicação das cartilhas de treinamento mais eficaz. O referencial teórico se baseia nas perspectivas das ciências da linguagem (lingüística, Semiótica e Semiologia visual), das teorias da comunicação, da teoria do design e das ciências humanas aplicadas. O objeto deste estudo é uma cartilha de treinamento sobre coleta seletiva e consciência ambiental, elaborada no formato de histórias em quadrinhos e destinada principalmente a trabalhadores operacionais, mas também às suas famílias e sociedade em geral. O estudo concluiu que apesar da existência de um conjunto de signos icônicos elementares e universais, às vezes a operação desses signos depende da sua articulação com outros signos mais complexos e do auxílio do texto verbal para maior precisão, além da posse de certo repertório prévio. / The present work refers to the study of the concept of structure while the iconic representation of ideas, simple and complex, (by the visual elements of comics) and their presence in training manuals turned into this graphic language. The research seeks to confirm if there is such kind of thing as a set of minimal units of signification in comics which universal features would allow intuitive interpretation of its codes, making communication via manuals more efficacious. The theorical reference is based upon the perspectives of sciences of language (linguistics, semiotics and visual semiology), the theories of communication, design theory and on applied human sciences. The object of this study is a training manual about environmental education and recycling published as a comic book and planned for the use of operational employees but also for their families and community. The study has concluded that, although the existence of a collection of elementary and universal iconic signs, sometimes handling this signs depends on the articulation with more complex signs and on the help of verbal text for means of higher precision, besides the possession of a certain previous background.

In the present effort, the philosopher Henri Bergson’s (1859-1941) seminal philosophical work functions as a revitalizing force and even an implicit point of departure for the more urban-oriented critique of Henri Lefebvre’s (1901-1991) watershed text L’Producción de l’espace/The Production of Space (1974). Both Lefebvre and Bergson in fact share a common perception of space—it is neither a static ground, nor an apriori condition of experience as Kant argued, but is instead a process inseparable from time and implicated in thought itself. Grounded in this resulting novel understanding of space, time and difference, I use an interdisciplinary approach to analyze Madrid’s cultural imaginary through novels by Belén Gopegui (1992), Pío Baroja (1911) and Luis Martín-Santos (1961); films by Carlos Saura (1996), Alejandro Amenábar (1997), and American Jim Jarmusch (1992); and the urban space of Madrid’s Retiro Park. The purpose of this work is twofold. On the one hand it is an attempt to reconcile the spatial issues of concern to cultural or human geography with an approach to social life grounded in the humanities. On the other it is a call for a deeper understanding of methodology taken in its widest sense. The former seeks not only to introduce spatial questions to the analysis of literature and film but also to articulate the intimate relation of cultural products to the urban processes in which they are formed, interpreted and sold. The latter requires an investigation of the philosophical preconceptions that structure our spatial practice and interpretation, as well as an awareness of the consequences these preconceptions hold—not only for understanding our common world, but also for producing it and finally for the possibility of changing it through action. These twin purposes—bringing geographical concerns into the humanities and assessing the philosophical bases of our spatial production and interpretation—are not so far removed. Through a careful reading of the above key literary, filmic and urban texts from twentieth century Madrid, this work explores the important consequences of conceiving of space as simultaneously mental and physical. In the Bergsonian fashion, these explorations seek to dispense with the stagnant and irreconcilable philosophical tropes of both pure materialism and pure idealism in order to yield a more precise understanding of cultural forms as living processes.

The relationship between ideophones and gestures has only recently been studied and is not yet completely understood. The topic has been specifically addressed by Kita (1993), Klassen (1998), Dingemanse (2013), Mihas (2013), and Reiter (2013). Yet there has been little focus on onomatopoeic ideophones. Onomatopoeic ideophones have been set aside as different by many previous researchers (Klassen, 1998, pp. 28-31; Kilian-Hatz, 2001, pp. 161-163; Dingemanse, 2011, pp. 131, 165-167; Mihas, 2012, pp. 327-329; Reiter, 2013, pp. 9-10, 308). Being stigmatized as simple, they have been labeled as "sound mimicking words" (McGregor, 2002, p. 341), "non-linguistic sounds" (Güldemann, 2008, p. 283), or "imitative sounds" (Hinton et al., 1994, §2.1). This thesis specifically addresses the relationship between onomatopoeic ideophones and gestures in Pastaza Quichua (PQ). My data acquired from primary and secondary sources, consists of 69 interactions, comprising eight hours of video recordings collected in Tena, Ecuador. These recordings include traditional narratives, personal experience tellings, elicited descriptions of nature, short didactic explanations, and folksongs. My methodology consists of close examination, classification, and tagging of 435 ideophones in the PQ data for sensory class and gestural accompaniment, using McNeill's (1992) typology. This thesis demonstrates that onomatopoeic ideophones do not have the same relationship with gestures that synesthetic ideophones do. Synesthetic ideophones are consistently accompanied by gestures (94.4% of the time) while onomatopoeic ideophones are much less likely to be accompanied by gestures (27.0% of the time). The lack of gestures occurring with onomatopoeic ideophones is striking given that PQ speakers seem to be constantly gesturing during speech. The PQ data supports previous observations that most gestures accompanying ideophones are iconic (Kunene, 1965; Dingemanse, 2013; Reiter, 2013; Mihas, 2013; Kita, 1993). The data also supports McNeill's (2007, p. 11) statement that gestures are used to make an image more real and that repetition can lead to fading gestures. However, it challenges his prediction that a minimal departure from context is the cause of a conspicuous lack of gesture. Sensory type, that is whether an ideophone is onomatopoeic or not, seems to be the most important factor in predicting gestural behavior. This paper also contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between ideophones and gestures and, ultimately, between language and gesture.

Abstract One of the ways for a speaker to make sense of an object or event in the real world is to make use of iconicity between two things. Through iconic metaphorical extensions, the speaker connects the object or event to something else. In this study, I consider how speakers form concepts through iconic metaphorical extensions, examining how they metaphorically extend one concept to another. I suggest that all speakers use the same ways of forming metaphorical extensions and control metaphorical extensions according to their intentions and contexts. Using basic and simple shapes (e.g. 0) and their related metaphorical expressions (e.g. `a circular argument'), I discuss the role of iconicity in metaphorical understanding, the relationship between concept and language, and metaphorical extensions as tools of concept formation. I conduct descriptive investigations using dictionaries and compare related senses for particular basic shapes between English and Japanese, looking at their polysemous networks and historical changes. Using questionnaires, interviews and tasks with native speakers of English and Japanese, I conduct experimental investigations to examine the speakers' associations in relation to basic shapes and the degree of iconicity in metaphorical extensions. This study suggests that concepts, although probably stored in the mental space, are recreated every time they occur. Concept formation through iconic metaphorical extensions must be dynamic because it is based on 'extensions' of existing concepts, and must be universal to all speakers because metaphorical extensions are among the most basic mental activities of human beings. I propose dynamic and universal models which represent the way in which a speaker forms concepts, connecting a linguistic form and a mental picture and controlling iconic metaphorical extensions. These models contribute to understanding both similarities and differences in use of metaphorical extensions between English and Japanese.

Professional writing students must analyze communications in multiple modalities, on page or screen. This project argues that student analysts benefit from using articulated heuristics, summaries of articles, books, or theories in chart form that remain in the visual field with the communication to be analyzed. Keeping the heuristic in view reduces students' cognitive load by narrowing the search for solution to the categories in the heuristic. These heuristics, often one page or one screen, contain key words, phrases, or questions that allow students to approach analysis from experts' points of view at more than one level of complexity. Students locate instantiations of the categories in the communication analyzed, incorporating the category/instantiation pairs into personal schemas for analysis. As students classify communications, relate parts together and to other communications, and perform operations on the content, they see how communication achieves its meaning and formulate appropriate responses. Rather than rely on one all-purpose heuristic, this dissertation presents a range of heuristics reflecting rhetorical, discourse, linguistic, usability, and visual strategies that enable students to critique both form and function in communication. The heuristics reflect a systematically ordered workplace context, articulate an appropriate and specific theory for the situation, interface with other heuristic systems for depth and efficacy, and instantiate the categories at some helpful secondary level of complexity. To theorize the visual nature of the heuristic chart displays, I employ the semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce, working through the implications of chart construction as I diagram Peirce's theory of diagrammatic iconicity.

This thesis centres around a sensory theory of protolanguage emergence, or STP. The STP proposes that shared biases to make associations between sensory modalities provided the basis for the emergence of a shared protolinguistic lexicon. Crucially, this lexicon would have been grounded in our perceptual systems, and thus fundamentally non-arbitrary. The foundation of such a lexicon lies in shared cross-modal associations: biases shared among language users to map properties in one modality (e.g., visual size) onto another (e.g., vowel sounds). While there is broad evidence that we make associations between a variety of modalities (Spence, 2011), this thesis focuses specifically on associations involving linguistic sound, arguing that these associations would have been most important in language emergence. Early linguistic utterances, by virtue of their grounding in shared cross-modal associations, could be formed and understood with high mutual intelligibility. The first chapter of the thesis will outline this theory in detail, addressing the nature of the proposed protolanguage system, arguing for the utility of non-arbitrariness at the point of language emergence, and proposing evidence for the likely transition form a non-arbitrary protolanguage to the predominantly arbitrary language systems we observe today. The remainder of the thesis will focus on providing empirical evidence to support this theory in two ways: (i) presenting experimental data showing evidence of shared associations between linguistic sound and other modalities, and (ii) providing evidence that such associations are evident cross-linguistically, despite the predominantly arbitrary nature of modern languages. Chapter two will examine well-documented associations between vowel quality and physical size (e.g., /i/ is small, and /a/ is large; Sapir, 1929). This chapter presents a new experimental approach which fails to find robust associations between vowel quality and size absent the use of a forced choice paradigm. Chapter three turns to associations between linguistic sound and shape angularity, taking a critical perspective on the classic takete/maluma experiment (Kohler, 1929). New empirical evidence shows that the acquisition of visual word forms plays a highly influential role in mediating associations between linguistic sound and angularity, but that associations between linguistic sound and visual form also play a minor role in auditory tasks. Chapter four will examine a relatively unexplored modality: taste. A simple survey which asks participants to choose non-words to match representative tastes shows that certain linguistic sounds are preferred for certain food items. In a more detailed study, we use a more direct perceptual matching task with actual tastants and synthesises speech sounds, further showing that people make robust shared associations between linguistic sound and taste. Chapter five returns to the visual modality, considering previously unexmained associations between linguistic sound and motion, specifically the feature of speed. This study demonstrates that people do make robust associations between the two modalities, particularly for vowel quality. Chapter six will aim to take a different empirical approach, considering non-arbitrariness in natural language. Motivated by the experimental data from the previous chapters, we turn to corpus analyses to assess the presence of non-arbitrariness in natural language which concurs with behavioural data showing linguistic cross-modal associations. First, a corpus analysis of taste synonyms in English shows small but significant correlations between form and meaning. With the goal of addressing the universality of specific sound-meaning associations, we examine cross-linguistic corpora of taste and motion terms, showing that particular phonological features tend to connect to certain tastes and types of motion across genetically and geographically distinct languages. Lastly, the thesis will conclude by considering the STP in light of the empirical evidence presented, and suggesting possible future empirical directions to explore the theory more broadly.

Abstract One of the ways for a speaker to make sense of an object or event in the real world is to make use of iconicity between two things. Through iconic metaphorical extensions, the speaker connects the object or event to something else. In this study, I consider how speakers form concepts through iconic metaphorical extensions, examining how they metaphorically extend one concept to another. I suggest that all speakers use the same ways of forming metaphorical extensions and control metaphorical extensions according to their intentions and contexts. Using basic and simple shapes (e.g. 0) and their related metaphorical expressions (e.g. `a circular argument'), I discuss the role of iconicity in metaphorical understanding, the relationship between concept and language, and metaphorical extensions as tools of concept formation. I conduct descriptive investigations using dictionaries and compare related senses for particular basic shapes between English and Japanese, looking at their polysemous networks and historical changes. Using questionnaires, interviews and tasks with native speakers of English and Japanese, I conduct experimental investigations to examine the speakers' associations in relation to basic shapes and the degree of iconicity in metaphorical extensions. This study suggests that concepts, although probably stored in the mental space, are recreated every time they occur. Concept formation through iconic metaphorical extensions must be dynamic because it is based on 'extensions' of existing concepts, and must be universal to all speakers because metaphorical extensions are among the most basic mental activities of human beings. I propose dynamic and universal models which represent the way in which a speaker forms concepts, connecting a linguistic form and a mental picture and controlling iconic metaphorical extensions. These models contribute to understanding both similarities and differences in use of metaphorical extensions between English and Japanese.

Thesis (M.(Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.