ID: 20231012155315435-1307

Researcher: Luca Gasparri, Piera Filippi, Markus Wild, Hans-Johann Glock

WP: Other

PI: Hans-Johann Glock, Markus Wild

Abstract: Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: abandoning arbitrariness-talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12443

Publication Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mila.12443

Data Type: null

Data Format: null

Git: None