Proto-Language as a Structurer and Enhancer of Perception

The evolution of the capacity for language remains a contested and important subject. Newer approaches consider language evolution to be a protracted and mosaic process, with selection operating in different contexts through multiple drivers. This research examines two potential factors in language evolution: cognitive-structuring functions of language, and non-arbitrariness (iconicity). It is based on the hypothesis that language exerts powerful facilitative effects on cognition, which may provide an additional adaptive advantage to early proto-language. Iconicity meanwhile may offer a foothold for the emergence of semantics by providing an innate link between sound and meaning. This study investigated both aspects through an online game in which participants had to categorise novel species of aliens. Results provided evidence for both cognitive structuring due to language, and iconicity, adding credence to the suggestion that both may have played important roles in language evolution.

Proto-Language as a Structurer and Enhancer of Perception

The evolution of the capacity for language remains a contested and important subject. Newer approaches consider language evolution to be a protracted and mosaic process, with selection operating in different contexts through multiple drivers. This research examines two potential factors in language evolution: cognitive-structuring functions of language, and non-arbitrariness (iconicity). It is based on the hypothesis that language exerts powerful facilitative effects on cognition, which may provide an additional adaptive advantage to early proto-language. Iconicity meanwhile may offer a foothold for the emergence of semantics by providing an innate link between sound and meaning. This study investigated both aspects through an online game in which participants had to categorise novel species of aliens. Results provided evidence for both cognitive structuring due to language, and iconicity, adding credence to the suggestion that both may have played important roles in language evolution.

Academic Publishing and the Referees' Reports: A Genre-Based Study

Peer review (RP) process as an academic genre is a pivotal step to certify the research quality to be published by enhancing peer perspectives and imparting credibility. The aim of this paper is to scrutinise the formal, cognitive structuring, the significant evaluative features and pragmatic value. To address this aim, a framework based on Bhatia’s (1993) cognitive structuring model and Fortanet's (2008) model of moves is adopted to analyse two referees' reports from two various disciplines namely Social Sciences and Veterinary Medicine solicited from Iraqi academicians. The findings unravel that there is a special format that followed by referees in their reports concerning the balanced use of positive/ negative comments along with the structural organization adopted. The generic structuring of the two analysed reports includes four paramount moves that are similar despite they are from two different disciplines. In addition, the most notably comments assigned by referees' reports are content related defects which are amalgamated with the use of language written.

The linguistic sources of offense of taboo terms in German Sign Language

Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of linguistic means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms.