![xvi INTRODUCfiON
One late literary reflection of the ··natural language fantasy" may be found
in Modernist efforts at renewing poetry by going back to the archaic or piclo-
gmphic roots of human language. Thus Ezra Pound welcomed (and edited)
Ernest Fenollosa's epochal essay The Chinese Wri11e11 Charat·ter as a Medimnfor
Poetry (1918). asking poets lo adopl an iconic way of writing similar lo lhe one
described in this treatise. In Fenollosa's and Pound"s (largely mistaken) view. the
Chinese written character is basically an iconic pictogram.
something much more: than arbitrary symbols. It is based upon a vivid short·
hand picture of the operations of nature. In the ... spoken won! then: is no
natural connection between thing and sign: all depends on sheer convention.
But the Chinese method follows natural sugestion (Pound 1964: 8).
Speaking of a "natural conneclion between thing and sign" Fenollosa (an
Emersonian) look up again the long tradition (going back at leasl to the Middle
Ages) of seeing and evaluating everything primarily in terms of similitude or
similarity. Even John Locke, who was the first to use the lerm 'semiotics' and
one of the Modems to shift lhe weight away from the ideal of similarily lo that
of 'difference' (which is at the very centre of all arbitrariness). still spoke of the
'nalural' sign when meaning the iconic sign.
Now Fenollosa. opposing the sculpture of LaocoOn1 to a line from Brown-
ing, also conlra.~ts poelry in general and Chinese poetry in particular with the
western visual arts:
1be untruth of a painting or a photograph is that. in spite of iL'i L"Oncn:tene55.
it drops the element of natural succession. (...] One superiority of verbal
poelly as an art n:sl'i in iL'i getting back to lhe fundamental reality of time.
Chinese poetry has the unique advantage of t."'OI''bining both clements. II
speaks at once with the vividness of painting. and with the mobility of sounds.
II is. in some sense. more: objective than either. more dramatic. In reading
Chinese we do not seem to be juggling mental t."OUntcrs. but to be watching
things work out their own fate (Pound 1964: 9).
Thus. lhe poetic medium of the Chinese wrinen character has the advantage of
being both an iconic image (visually concrete. spatial. vivid) and an iconic
diagram (sounds and ideograms in succession). Today. this semiotic combination
is not just found in film but is typical of such 1wen1ieth-century literary move-
ments as imagism2 and futurism (with iL~ anempt at the combinalion of typo-
graphic space and movement). of the monlage poetry (with its non-linear
sequences of images and scenes) of such Modernist pioneers as Ezra Pound (The](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1261804-250523020418-33ce1a75/85/Form-Miming-Meaning-Conicity-In-Language-And-Literature-Max-Nnny-Ed-18-320.jpg)
![Hungarian
Phonological level
lei
Iii
IVAN F6NAGY
-->
Phonetic level
Iii
(e(
Similarly. in the French recordings, the ly/, the Ia:/ were dilabialized in faint
anger or contempt, and. in contra-distinction.li/ and /e/ were pronounced (y) and
(cr:( in the display of a tender approach: [mre: sy: ] in Mais si, ~·oymts.'
French
lit
lei -->
(y(
(oe(
Such phonetic paradoxes are quite current in emotive speech.
2.2 A model ofdual encoding
2.2.1 Grammar and Distorter (icmtic encoding)
To account for such phonetic paradoxes I proposed a model of dual encodi11g
procedure in a previous paper (197)).1n a first stage the GRAMMAR produces
a sequence of phonemes. such as Hungarian /e: nJ nT . ligen/ /ge""Ye.'i': or
French /me si vwajO/ Mai.{ si, myon.r. In a second phase. the phoneme-sequence
has to go through a DISTORltR or MODIFIER which transforms lei into (i].
Iii into (e] in the Hungarian unerances: le/ into [oe] and /if into (y] in the French
utterance. Since these sounds are unacceptable in the given context. the hearer
traces them back to the phonemes generated by the Grammar. Thus. for the
French hearer the (oe] in the sequence (m0] moe111 'he grinds' would make no
sense: no more than would .mr. past perfect of suvoir. He automatically re-
establishes /e/, comprehending mais. and /if, comprehending si. and interprets the
distortions as an additional gesture: tender lip-rounding.
SPEAKER
(oe(
(y(
HEARER
lei + tendemes..'i
Iii + tenderness](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1261804-250523020418-33ce1a75/85/Form-Miming-Meaning-Conicity-In-Language-And-Literature-Max-Nnny-Ed-43-320.jpg)
![WHY ICONICITY?
1be emotive value of the speech sound is due to the act of distonion and not to
the produced speech sound a.o; such.
The glottal Slop ("1] inserted before or after a vowel in English, Gennan.
French or Hungarian. expresses anger, emphasis or military discipline.
SPEAKER DISTORTER HEARER
/vowel/ -+ ("1 +vowel] -+ vowel + empha.o;is/anger
This is not the case in languages where f1l functions as a phoneme. and is
already present at the in-put. as in Classical Arabic natal 'he loses':
SPEAKER DISTORTER HEARER
f1 +vowel/ -+ off -+ vowel (neutral attitude)
1be naive English or Hungarian hearer might. however. be tempted to interpret
the output signal in the frame of his own phonological system. and perceive
(7ata] as a distorted /atal. A four year old Hungarian girl. watching the TV
interview of an Arabian diplomat, a.o;ked her father. somewhat frightened: "Why
is he so angry?"
2.2.2 Rules ofdi.fWrtion
Both. GRAMMAR and DISTORTER. are rule-governed. However. the rules
governing expressive distortions essentially differ from grammatical rules
producing phoneme-sequences. For instance, rules producing phonetic distortions
are always motivated. i("(mk. Phonemic encoding is always digital (discrete).the
rules of distortion are mostly gradient (Lotz 1950. Sebeok 1952. Scherer 1985).
I attempted in a previous paper (1971) to outline the principles governing
expressive oral gesturing.
I. First principle: Voluntary reprodltctim•ofsymptoms associated with the vocal
apparatus:
Pllaryngeal contraction in negative emotions such as HATRED or CONTEMPT.
may illustrate the first principle. The contraction of pharyngeal muscles accompa-
nies naruea; and may express attitudes derived from nausea, such as DISLIKE
and CONTEMPT (as shown by Trojan 1952. 1975. and interpreted from a psycho-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1261804-250523020418-33ce1a75/85/Form-Miming-Meaning-Conicity-In-Language-And-Literature-Max-Nnny-Ed-44-320.jpg)
![IVAN F6NAGY
analytic perspective by Fenichel. 1946). The French metaphoric cliche Je le 1·omi.{ 'I
hate this chap' (lit.: 'I vomit him') clearly identities contempt and vomiting.
Similarly, laryngeal closure. followed by a violent outburst is a sign of
discomfort in infants. "a glottal attack of discomfort" (Unlu.weimat:.) according
to Gurzmann (1928 (1926]). and can be considered as a biological metaphor of
a cough; a reHex which serves to eliminate under high subglottal pressure
harmful corpuscules. preventing them from entering the lungs. By extension the
reHex appears a" a sign of refusal and rejection. Emphatic glottal plosives could
be seen as symbolic performances of ejecting an internal 'bad object' or rejecting
an unwanted person.
2. According to a second principle. the movements of the speech organs may
substitute for bodily gestures. The French poet and phonetician. Andre Spire.
interprets articulation ao; a "dance of the speech organs" (1986 (1949]).
In the course of language acquisition the movements of the tongue tend to
follow the movement of the hand. Thus. the child produces an i sound by
advancing the tongue. while pointing with his forefinger at an object wanted (as
observed by Walpurg.a Raffier-Engel 1983). A nine month old girl imitates.
inversely. the extrusion of the tongue of the adult by raising her forefinger
(Werner and Kaplan 1963: 86).
The forward motion of the tongue in joy and tenderness may represent a
physical and moral approach to the partner. a friendly attitude (German entgegen-
kommeml 'friendly' lit.: 'coming to meet'). The backward motion of the tongue
in hostile emotions and in sadness corresponds to a physical and moral with-
dr.twal. In contr.tdistinction. the tongue approaches the alveolcs pronouncing /i/
when we are high spirited.
The violent contraction of the tongue muscles may substitute for the
contraction of arm muscles. More generally. muscular contraction on glottal and
oral level may substitute for a violent global effort of the whole body. e.g.. in
preparing for a fight.
Lips and tongue may perform symbolic gestures. The increased maxillary
angle in anger or the incisors biting the lower lip allude to oral aggression: biting
and swallowing. It could be considered as an aBusive gesture. The anticipation
of a kiss in tender lip rounding is equally allusive. Other gestures could be
labeled as emcali·e. Labialization of vowels or palalization of consonants may
recall the speech of small children whose articulation is generally more labial](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1261804-250523020418-33ce1a75/85/Form-Miming-Meaning-Conicity-In-Language-And-Literature-Max-Nnny-Ed-45-320.jpg)
![the hole a number. Use a soft pencil for writing. This number should
refer to a record (book) under similar number, or to an "egg-blank,"
containing the following data: name of bird, number of eggs in set,
date and locality, name of collector, and any special information about
the eggs or nest which the collector may think advisable. The eggs
may be kept in drawers or boxes lined with cotton, and divided into
little compartments.
For detailed directions for collecting and preserving birds' eggs and
nests, see Bendire's "Directions for Collecting, Preparing, and
Preserving Birds' Eggs and Nests" or Davie's "Methods in the Art of
Taxidermy," pp. 74-78. [21] Mammals.—Any mammal intended for a
scientific specimen should be measured in the flesh, before skinning,
and as soon after death as practicable, when the muscles are still
flexible. (This is particularly true of larger species, such as foxes,
wildcats, etc.) The measurements are taken in millimetres, a rule or
steel tape being used. (1) Total length: stretch the animal on its back
along the rule or tape and measure from the tip of the nose (head
extended as far as possible) to the tip of the fleshy part of tail (not to
end of hairs). (2) Tail: bend tail at right angles from body backward
and place end of ruler in the angle, holding the tail taut against the
ruler. Measure only to tip of flesh (make this measurement with a pair
of dividers). (3) Hind foot: place sole of foot flat on ruler and
measure from heel to tip of longest toe-nail (in certain small
mammals it is necessary to use dividers for accuracy). The
measurements should be entered on the label, along with such
necessary data as sex, locality, date, and collector's name.
Skin a mammal as soon after death as possible. Lay mammal on back
and with scissors or scalpel open the skin along belly from about
midway between fore and hind legs to vent, taking care not to cut
muscles of abdomen. Skin down on either side of the body by
working the skin from flesh with fingers till hind legs appear. Use
corn-meal to stanch blood or moisture. With left hand grasp a leg and
work the knee from without into the opening just made; cut the bone
at the knee, skin leg to heel and clean meat off the bone (leaving it
attached of course to foot). In animals larger than squirrels skin down](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1261804-250523020418-33ce1a75/85/Form-Miming-Meaning-Conicity-In-Language-And-Literature-Max-Nnny-Ed-72-320.jpg)
Form Miming Meaning Conicity In Language And Literature Max Nnny Ed
- 1. Form Miming Meaning Conicity In Language And Literature Max Nnny Ed download https://ebookbell.com/product/form-miming-meaning-conicity-in- language-and-literature-max-nnny-ed-2523608 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
- 2. Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be interested in. You can click the link to download. Methods For Mining And Summarizing Text Conversations 1st Giuseppe Carenini https://ebookbell.com/product/methods-for-mining-and-summarizing-text- conversations-1st-giuseppe-carenini-2403812 Project Management For Mining 2nd Edition Robin J Hickson Terry L Owen https://ebookbell.com/product/project-management-for-mining-2nd- edition-robin-j-hickson-terry-l-owen-42226460 Study Guide For The Professional Licensure Of Mining And Mineral Processing Engineers 7th Edition 7th Edition Society For Mining https://ebookbell.com/product/study-guide-for-the-professional- licensure-of-mining-and-mineral-processing-engineers-7th-edition-7th- edition-society-for-mining-4648196 Transactions Of Society For Mining Metallurgy And Exploration Inc Volume 328 2010 Society For Mining https://ebookbell.com/product/transactions-of-society-for-mining- metallurgy-and-exploration-inc-volume-328-2010-society-for- mining-4648202
- 3. Mitigation Of Metal Mining Influenced Water Volume 2 Management Technologies For Metal Mining Influenced Water Gusek https://ebookbell.com/product/mitigation-of-metal-mining-influenced- water-volume-2-management-technologies-for-metal-mining-influenced- water-gusek-4706726 Statistics For Mining Engineering 1st Edition Jacek M Czaplicki https://ebookbell.com/product/statistics-for-mining-engineering-1st- edition-jacek-m-czaplicki-4748396 Management Technologies For Metal Mining Influenced Water Techniques For Predicting Metal Mining Influenced Water R David Williams https://ebookbell.com/product/management-technologies-for-metal- mining-influenced-water-techniques-for-predicting-metal-mining- influenced-water-r-david-williams-5222714 Project Management For Mining Handbook For Delivering Project Success Hickson https://ebookbell.com/product/project-management-for-mining-handbook- for-delivering-project-success-hickson-5427244 21 Recipes For Mining Twitter Matthew Russell https://ebookbell.com/product/21-recipes-for-mining-twitter-matthew- russell-2571362
- 5. !J - ~ -
- 7. Form miming meaning !conicity in language and literature Edited by Max Nanny University ofZurich Olga Fischer University ofAmsterdam JOHN BENJAMIN$ PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
- 8. TM 00 The paper used in Ibis publication meets the minimum n:quiremenls of American Nalional Slandard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Prinled Library Materials. ANSI Z39AB-1984. Ubrary orCongress CatalogiD&-in-Publkalion 0.18 Fonn miming meaning: iconicity in language and lilend.lll'e I edikd by Max Niinny. Olga Fischer. p. em. IncludesbibliographicaJ references and index. I. Philology. 2. konicity (Linguislics) I. Ninny. Max. II. Fischer.OigaCatharina Maria. P33.F67 1999 401'AI--dc21 ISBN 00272 21790(Eur.)/l 55619533 8 (US)(Hb:alk. pupcr) Cl Copyright 1999-John Benjamins B.V. 99-10763 CIP No part of lhis book may be n:pmdiK.-ed in any fonn. by print. pholoprint. microfilm. or any other means, wilhout written permission from lhe publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • Thc Netherlands John Benjamins Nonh America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
- 9. Preface Acknowledgements List of contributors Table of Contents Introduction: lconicity as a Creative Force in Language Use Olga Fiscller a11d Max Niim1y PART I Geuenl Why lconicity'! Ivan Fdnagy Action. Speech, and Grammar: The Sublimation Trajectory Jr~hnHaima11 Creating the World in Our Image: A New Theory of Love of ix xi x.iii 37 Symmetry and lconicist Desire 59 RalfNornnan On Semiolic Interplay: Fonn.o; of Creative Interaction Between lconicity and lndexicality in Twentieth-Century Literature 83 Jt,lrnJ.White Iconicity in Literalure: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Prose Writing 109 Sim011 J. Alder.foll
- 10. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART II Sotmd and Rhythm What, if Anything, is Phonological Iconicity? Andreas Fi:d1er Imagination by Ideophones Hans Heinrich Meier Iconicity and Beyond in ''Lullaby for Jumbo"': Semiotic Functions of 123 135 Poetic Rhythm 155 Walter Bernhart PART Ill Letters, Ty-aphy and Graphic Design Alphabetic Leners as Icons in Literary Texts 173 Max.Niinny 'singing is silence': Being and Nothing in the Visual Poetry of E. E. Cummings 199 Michael Webster Iconicity and Divine Likenes.o;: George Herbert's "Colos.o;. 3.3'' 215 Mauhias Ba11er Iconic Rendering of Motion and Process in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams 235 Peter Halter Graphological Iconicity in Print Advertising: A Typology 251 A11drec1s Fisd1er Iconicity in the Digital World: An Opportunity to Create a Personal Image? 285 E~·aUa ~·ss PART IV Word-Formation Diagrammatic Iconicity in Word-Fonnation Friedrich U11gerer Iconicity in Brand Names /11grid Piller 307 325
- 11. TABLE OF CONTENTS vii PART V Syntax and Discourse On the Role Played by lconicity in Grammaticalisalion Processes 345 Olga Fiscller Jconicity. Typology and Cognition 375 Bernd Kortmann 11le Iconic Use of Synlax in British and American Fiction 393 Wolfgang G. MUller Linguistic Expression of Perceptual Relationships: lconicity as a Principle of Text Organization (A Case Sludy) 409 El:.bieta Tabakowska Author index 423 Subject index 433
- 12. Preface 11le studies assembled in this volume reprcsenl a selection of papers lhat were originally given at the international and interdisciplinary sympo.<iium on "lconicity in Language and Lilerature', organised by the University of Zurich in co- operation with the University of Amsterdam and held in Zurich. 20--22 March 1997. To our knowledge this wa.~ lhe tirsl international gathering of both linguisls and literary scholars to present studies on iconic a."pects in both language and literature. II can thus be said that the organisers of. and the participants in, the Zurich conference were nol jusl following a lrend but leading one. For allhough linguisls have shown an increased interesl in iconicity in the last decade or so (see the recent MLA-Bibliographies for this). we feelthalthe symposium and the resulting colleclion of papers in this volume put the interdis- ciplinary study of iconic dimensions. especially of iconicity in literary texts. on the map. It is to be hoped that this publication will stimulate new research into the still largely unploughed but potentially fruitful field of iconicity in both language and literature. The symposium and the publication of papers would have been impo.!isible without the help of institutional sponsors. We should therefore like to express our deep gralitude for the generous financial contribulions made by the 'Hochschul- stiftung des Kantons ZUrich' .the 'Philosophische Fakultiitl' and the 'Englisches Seminar' of the University of Zurich, as well as by the 'Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek' (NWO) and lhe 'Facuheit der Leneren· of the University of Amsterdam. We should also like to thank the University of Zurich for iL" hospitality and its logistic help in organising the symposium. We are especially grateful to Barbara Hess Prusse and JUrg Joss for their unflagging a."sistance before and during the symposium. and in addition we would like to thank Therese Lutz for typing one of the papers into the computer, and Jettie Peterse for her work done on the abstracts.
- 13. PREFACE Our thanks also go to Kees Vaes of John Benjamins Ltd. for helping us to see this volume through the press. Last but not least, we would like to thank all the contributo~ and participants. who by their expertise and enthusiasm made the symposium such a success. M.N. and O.F.
- 14. Acknowledgements We are indebted to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Sinclair Stevenson Publishers (David Higham Associates) for Edith Sitwell. ''Lullaby for Jumbo''; W.W. Norton & Company and the E.E. Cummings Trust for allowing us to use extracb from the Complele PoemJ /904-/962 of£.£. Cumming-f. edited by George J. Finnage: The Houghton Libr.uy, Harvard University for allowing us to quote from the manuscripts of E.E. Cummings: Mss bMS Am 1892.5 (I). bMS Am 1892.7 (219) folder 8 and bMS Am 1823.5 (54): Professor Norman Davies for permission to use the extmct ''Pfalz'' from E11rope: A Hisrory (Oxford University Press)
- 15. Contributors Simon Alderson Department of English. University of Hong Koog. Pokfulam Road. Hong Kong. SAR. alderson@hkucc.hku.hk Matthias Bauer Englischcs Seminar, Westrli.Jische Wilhelms-Universitii.t, Johannis.~tnwe 12-20. 48143 MUnster. Germany. bauenn@uni-muenster.de Walter Bemlwt Department of English. Univcrsitiil Graz. Hcinrichslra.o~sc 36, 8010 Gr.az. Austria. wa11er.bcmhart@kfunigraz.ac.at Andreas Fischer Englisches Seminu, Universiliit Zilrich, Plattenstrassc 47. 8032 ZUrich. Switzerland. alischer@es.unizh.ch Olga Fi~~eher Engels Scminarium, Universiteit van Am.~lerdam. Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Am.'ilerdam. The Netherlands. olga.flscher@hum.uva.nl Ivan F6nagy Residence La Fontaine, I Square Claude Debussy. Antony 92160. France John Haiman Department of Linguistics. Mac:ale!iler College. 1600 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul. MN 55105-1899. U.S.A.• haiman®macalester.edu Peter Haller Department of English. Universill!: de Lausanne. BFSH 2. 1015 Lausanne. Switzerland. phallcr@angl.unil.ch Bcmd1 Konmann Englisches Seminar, Albert-Ludwigs-Universiliil Frciburg. Poslfach. 79085 Frc:iburg. Gcnnany. konmann@ruf.uni-freiburg.de
- 16. xiv CONTRIBUTORS Hans Heinrich Meier Breitenaustrasse 130. 8200 Schaffhausen. Switzerland Wolfgang G. MUller lnslilul Rlr Anglislik/Amcrikanistik. Friedrich-Schiller Universilat Jena. Ernst-Abbe-PiaiZ 4. 07143 Jena. Gennany. x7muwo@rz.uni-jena.de Max Niinny Englisches Seminar. Universitiit ZOrich. Plattenstra.'ise 47. 8032 Ztlrich. Switzerland. naenny@es.unizh.ch RalrNomnan Department of English. University orTampere PL fiJ7. Kalevantie 4. 33101 Tamperc 10. Finland, ralr.nonman@uta.fi Ingrid Piller Seminar Rlr Englische Sprache und Kultur. Universitiit Hamburg. Von-Melle-Park 6. 20146 Hamburg. Germany. fs7a001 @m.uni-hamburg.de El.tbieta Tabakowska Institute of English. Jagiellonian University of Cracow, Mickiewicza 9/11. 31-120 Cracow. Poland. etab@vela.lilg.uj.edu.pl Friedrich Ungerer lnslitul Rir Anglistik/Amerikanistik. Univcrsiliit Rostock. 18051 Rostock. Germany. friedrich.ungerer@philfak..uni-mstock.de Michael Webster Grand Valley State University, 129 Lake Huron Hall. Allendale. MJ 49401-9403. US.A.. webstenn@gvsu.edu John White Department or German, School or Humanities, King's College, Strand. London WC2R 2LS. Eng:land Eva Lia Wyss Deulsches Seminar. Univen;itil. Zilrich. SchOnbcrggasse 9, 8001 Zilrich. Switzerland. elwyss@ds.unizh.ch
- 17. Introduction !conicity as a Creative Force in Language Use Olga Fischer University ofAmsterdam Max Nanny University ofZurich Adam's one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw. they had revealed their es~nces. had literally brought them to life. A thing and a name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things: words devolved imo a collet:tion of arbitr.uy signs: language had been severed from God. The story of the Garden. therefore. records not only the fall of man. but the fall of language (Paul Auster. CityofGia.u. 70). There seems to be an innate iconic streak in us that makes us somehow feel or believe that there is a direct link between a word or name (the 'signifier') and the object or concept (the 'signified') it stands for. Following Paul Auster's mythical interpretation in the above excerpt from his City of Gla.~s. we may construe this latent streak as a relic of a prelapsarian innocence, a primeval state when the signifier and the signified were still. in Auster's words. "interchange- able". According to this mythical view. the Edenic innocence of iconic significa- tion was destroyed by the Fall. which led to the babelisation or equally fatal Fall of language: for Adam's pristine language fell apart into a plurality of different languages. This had the effect that the same meaning wa.o; now expressed by different linguistic signs: "words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs". Auster's fictional myth belongs to the tradition of what Simpson (1978: 662) refers to a.o; the "natural language fantasy". i.e. the fanta.o;y that ·nature' had established a real connection between signs and the things they signify.
- 18. xvi INTRODUCfiON One late literary reflection of the ··natural language fantasy" may be found in Modernist efforts at renewing poetry by going back to the archaic or piclo- gmphic roots of human language. Thus Ezra Pound welcomed (and edited) Ernest Fenollosa's epochal essay The Chinese Wri11e11 Charat·ter as a Medimnfor Poetry (1918). asking poets lo adopl an iconic way of writing similar lo lhe one described in this treatise. In Fenollosa's and Pound"s (largely mistaken) view. the Chinese written character is basically an iconic pictogram. something much more: than arbitrary symbols. It is based upon a vivid short· hand picture of the operations of nature. In the ... spoken won! then: is no natural connection between thing and sign: all depends on sheer convention. But the Chinese method follows natural sugestion (Pound 1964: 8). Speaking of a "natural conneclion between thing and sign" Fenollosa (an Emersonian) look up again the long tradition (going back at leasl to the Middle Ages) of seeing and evaluating everything primarily in terms of similitude or similarity. Even John Locke, who was the first to use the lerm 'semiotics' and one of the Modems to shift lhe weight away from the ideal of similarily lo that of 'difference' (which is at the very centre of all arbitrariness). still spoke of the 'nalural' sign when meaning the iconic sign. Now Fenollosa. opposing the sculpture of LaocoOn1 to a line from Brown- ing, also conlra.~ts poelry in general and Chinese poetry in particular with the western visual arts: 1be untruth of a painting or a photograph is that. in spite of iL'i L"Oncn:tene55. it drops the element of natural succession. (...] One superiority of verbal poelly as an art n:sl'i in iL'i getting back to lhe fundamental reality of time. Chinese poetry has the unique advantage of t."'OI''bining both clements. II speaks at once with the vividness of painting. and with the mobility of sounds. II is. in some sense. more: objective than either. more dramatic. In reading Chinese we do not seem to be juggling mental t."OUntcrs. but to be watching things work out their own fate (Pound 1964: 9). Thus. lhe poetic medium of the Chinese wrinen character has the advantage of being both an iconic image (visually concrete. spatial. vivid) and an iconic diagram (sounds and ideograms in succession). Today. this semiotic combination is not just found in film but is typical of such 1wen1ieth-century literary move- ments as imagism2 and futurism (with iL~ anempt at the combinalion of typo- graphic space and movement). of the monlage poetry (with its non-linear sequences of images and scenes) of such Modernist pioneers as Ezra Pound (The
- 19. JNTRODUCilON xvii Como.¥). T.S. Eliot (The Wo.¥te Land) and of the later novels of James Joyce (Uiy.fSes. Finnega1u Wake). However. the same combination of iconic image and diagram can also be found in modem literary represenlations of the world generally. For twentieth- century wrilers had become aware that the literary expression and reflection of the new metropolitan environment and of a diverse global culture demanded new devices, new melhods of composition that went beyond mere diagrammatic narration. So Ezra Pound justified the use of associative juxtaposition or whal he called the 'ideogrammatic method' by the writer's urgent iconic need of having to match a radically changed. manifold and complex urban environment - which was no longer amenable to a simple, linear or merely temporal narrative order- by means of non-linear, so to speak. spatialised verbal images and compositional devices: 1be life in a small town or village is narrative. in a city the visual impressions sm;cecd each other. overlap. oven:ross. they are 'cinematographic'. but they are not of a simple linear sequem:e. They are often a Hood of nouns without vc:rbill relations ... a species of ideographic representations IPound 1921: 110). Similarly. in 1923 Eliol. having Joyce's Uly.ues and also his own The Ktls1e Umd in mind. praised the 'mythical method' (which implies a quasi-spatial timelessness. simultaneity) over the 'narrative method' (which follows a temporal sequence of cause and effect) in literary composition. To him, only the 'mythical method' wa'O "a way of controlling. of ordering. of giving a shape and signifi- cance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (Kennode 1975: 177). As the expressions "shape" and "panorama" suggest. Eliot was in favour of a method of iconic writing that combined spatial image with temporal diagram. Moving from a phylogenesis of language development - from iLo; mythical origins in ·natural language' to some twentieth-century literary revivals of pristine iconicity - to ontogenesis. we discover that a natural language fantasy is also strongly present in children. a." many studies have shown (cf. Slobin 1985. Pontecorvo 1994. F6nagy 1980, and this volume). II is well-known that children make much more frequent use of onomatopoeic words than adults. resorting. for instance,to the sounds made by animals as a name for these animals. Additional- ly. F6nagy (this volume) shows that children from different language back- grounds consistently associate certain sounds with particular chardCteristics of the objects signified. Children are also spontaneous folk-etymologists and tend to change fonns and meanings of signs in such a way that they become in their
- 20. xviii JNTRODUCilON eyes more 'nalural'.1 For instance. Dutch children may refer to the word ro1o11de 'round-about'. as ronlonde. thereby indicating Ihat lhey consider the expression to have a relationship wilh 'round' (Dutch /ront/ means 'round'). Similarly, opereren 'lo operate upon' often becomes openreren. because they associate it with the body that has to be opened up. Adults etymologisc less in this way because they have discovered lhe arbitrary value of most signs. i.e. they have come lo learn thai mosl signs are ·symbols' (in the Peircean sensc).4 It is interesting. however.lhat folk-etymology again may play an active pan once a sign has for some rea.<wn become opaque. e.g. lhrough infrequency of use. through language change. or because it is a borrowed word and a." such less transparent. Thus. the change in the form and/or meaning of words like ho11g11oil (from OE o11g 11a:gl. a nail that gives 'dislress') and bridegroom (from OE brydg11ma) occurred because the words ang and grmrcr ('man') had disappeared from the language. Anolher way in which children are highly iconic is in how they treat leners as piclures. as iconic images, before lhey have aclually learned to read and wrile. Thus, an English child once perceived lhe sign bed as a perfect icon for the object 'bed': the upright strokes of the 'b' and 'd' functioning as the bedposts and the circular ·o' anached to the strokes of the b and d functioning as the pillow (or head) on one side, and the elevalion of the feel on the other. (Poets are similar to children in this respect. cf. Paul Claudel's pictural interpretation of locomotil't'. quoted by Niinny. this volume.) Pontecorvo (1994) shows in her sludy of Italian four- to five-year olds, thai there is a distinct lendency in children who have not yet learned how to write but have nevertheless developed a 'sense' of letters louse more (imaginary) letter-signs for the Italian word case (a plural fonn. 'houses') than for ca.fa (singular, 'house') in spite of the facl lhat the plural inflection in Italian does not add any sounds/letters but contains the same number of letters as the singular. In other words, the extra letter-signs lhat these children produce are iconically motivated, motivated by their perception of the objects in the 'real' world. In a similar way some children also use smaller lener-signs to 'write' the word casetta (It. 'little house'). In view of lhe above observations. and in view of the fact lhat lhe ontoge- netic developmenl of organism." - and perhaps also of such cullural artefacls a-. language - to some extent may be said to re-enact their phylogenetic develop- ment (cf. Stampe 1979. but see also Aitchison 1996: 93-94). il is nol surprising that quite a number of linguisls believe lhal language, bolh spoken and written, may have started off iconically. Bolinger and Sears (1981: 129) write:
- 21. INTRODUCI10N Everything points lo icons as more primitive lhan symbols. Children invent them. Two speakers without a common language re!IOlt to lhem for communi- calion. But however vivid the beginnings. lhe color has long siru:e faded to a unifonn gray ... Language has be<:ome an almost purely conventional code, with a few exceptions listed as curiosities. xix 1bese linguists also suggest lhal icons do not play a large part in language anymore. Indeed, within Saussurean or structural linguistics, the idea that lhe linguislic sign is essentially arbitrary has long reigned supreme. Similarly. the advances that were made in historical linguislics by the Neogrammarian school in the late nineteenlh cenlury were fully based on the notion of the arbitrariness of lhe sign. However. even the Neogrammarians had to admit that there were exceplions to their 'sound-laws'. These they listed under the rather vague notion of ·analogy'. Analogy. as will be discussed below, must be seen as a type of change lhal is molivaled, a change againsl an iconic backclolh.It seems lhen lhal in language change. and therefore in language in general. both arbilrary and iconic rule.o; play a role. Many linguistic signs (or structures) may once have slarted off as icons, bul in the course of lime they have lended lo become worn down to mere symbols. (This. however. is not only lrue for language, bul for all cultural artefacts. a.o; Haiman 1993. among others, has shown.) In language. however, there is a conslnnl opposilion between economy. which causes linguis- tic items and structures lobe eroded, lhus becoming convenlional. that is, more and more 'symbolic' (arbitrary). and the need for ex.pressivity lo counterbalance the ero.o;ion (cf. Plank 1979, Haiman 1983). This is very nicely expressed by Langacker (1977: 106-107) in his melaphor of language as a "compacling machine": II would not be entirely inappropriate lo regard languages ... a.~ giganlic expression-compacting machines. They require as inpul a continuous How of creatively produced expressions formed by lexical innovation. by lexically and grammatically regular periphrasis, and by the figurative use of lexical and periphra.o;tic locution.o;. The machine does whalever it can to wear down lhe expressions fed iniO it. ll fades metaphor.; by standardizing them and using them over and over again. It attacks expressions of all kinds by phonetic erosion. It bleaches lexical items of most of their semantic '-'Ontenlo; and fon.-es them into service as grammillical markers. ll chips away at the boundaries between elements and crushes lhem 10gether into smaller units. The machine has a voracious appetite. Only lhe assiduous elforu of speakers - who salvage whal they can from its output and recycle il by using their creative
- 22. JNTRODUCilON energies to fa.o;hion 11. steady Row of new cxprcssioll5 to feed back in - keep the whole thing going. Langacker empha."ises the speakers' "creative energies··. h is here indeed that iconicity comes back in: i.e. iconicity is not just characteristic of an earlier, more primitive stage of language, but it plays a role whenever a speaker's (or a writer's) expres.o;ivity is at issue: when, for whatever reason (poetic, practical. humorous. oul of sheer necessity), he or she is trying lo express himself or herself anew, in a more concrete or less worn-down form of language. Hence. we discover iconicity in circumslances in which language is created: more consciously, as in literary lcxts.5 bul also unconsciously in children's acquisition of language. in the creolisation of pidgins.6 and (as we have noted above) in situations in which linguistic structures have become opaque for some reason or other. have become difficull lo process because of changes having laken place elsewhere. so that some re-analysis is inevitable.' In all lhese siluations language users unlea<ih their crealive energies. which. we lhink. involve iconicity. And as "our linguistic system is inextricably interwoven with lhe rest of our physical and cognitive selves'' (SweeL'iCr 1990: 6: and see also especially Haiman. Konmann and Norrman, this volume), with lhe world we live in. we tend to fall back on our power of imilation. which. according lo Liebennan (1991: 140-42). is one oflhe most primitive means lhat humans have lhat allows them lo adapt and succeed in lhe slruggle for survival. Considering, a" we have noted above, that there are two competing forces at work in language (that of 'economy' and that of 'expressivity'), it may not come as a surprise lhalthere have been proposals to dislinguish also two syslems in language fonnalion or language generalion. Thus,lvan F6nagy ( 1995: 285-86) has suggested lhat there is a dual structuring of sentences at work. namely a linguislic and a paralinguiSiic coding. the Iauer involving an expressive transgres- sion of the regular linguistic rules. In this volume, F6nagy refers to the paralin- guistic (or "secondary") code a." a "Distorter" or "Modifier". which processes all linguistic units generated by lhe Grammar (or "primary code"') in live speech.11 Both Grammar and Distorter, however. are rule governed. bul the rules of the Grammar are symbolic. arbitrary or conventionalised. wherea-. those of the Distorter are motivated or iconic. In his The Viole11ce of I...ang11age (1990). Jean-Jacques l..ecercle makes a similar dislinclion between the rules of gmmmar and the rules of whal he calls the "remainder". Bolh types of rules are "intertwined" (1990: 130) in the
- 23. JNTRODUCilON xxi production of language. but the rules of grammar are normative and have a general application. while those of the remainder are idiosyncratic. and are therefore much more difficult to capture in general terms. He sees the remainder ao; ··ex.ces.o;'' (p. 60), as ''rhizomatic" (p. 128 If.). ao; a locus beyond frontiers (p. 52), that forces us to 'play'. So the rules of lhe remainder are playful. they play with the normative rules. 1be studies presenled in this volume will explore iconicity from two different angles. A first group of scholars is especially interested in how far the primary code, the code of grammar. is influenced by iconic motivation (see Tabakowska on rules involved in discourse. Ungerer on rules in word fonnalion. and A. Fischer, FOnagy and Meier on phonological rules) and how originally iconic models have become conventionalised (cf. 0. Fischer. Haiman, and also F6nagy). Others go one step further in exploring how. for instance. lhe presence of iconicity can tell us more about the structure of human cognition (Kortmann, Ungerer) or how the ''iconicist desire for symmetry" can be related to the symmetry of the human body (Nomnan). A second group of contributors is more interested in the presence of iconicity as part of the secondary code. i.e. in how speakers and writers remotivate or play with the primary code. how they concretise what has become conventional or how they use fonn to add to meaning (see Bauer. Halter, Miiller, Niinny and Webster for this presence in literary texts. A. Fischer and Piller in commercial language. and Wyss in the electronic use of language). When Bolinger and Sears suggested (cf. above) that icons do nol play a large part in language anymore. they were mainly thinking of what we will call here 'imagic iconicity". However. 'diagrammalic iconicity' (iconicity of a more abstract kind) is pervasively present in language. especially on the higher levels of language. as Bolinger (1980: 18) indeed indicated when he wrote: "Arbitrary and conventional is a fitting description of distinctive sounds. less so of words. even less of sentences. and beyond that scarcely lit' at all. The larger the scope. the looser and less arbitrary the system". There is lhus a basic difference between 'imagic iconicity' and 'diagrammatic it:onicily' (for an overview of the various types of iconicity that will be distinguished here. see Figure I).
- 24. xxii ,..,,.;..;,_,. INTRODUCilON -!-'""""'" -laculr -visuul .._..l"'"""""j-·-....·~ - l~"'mKII)' uf muti>•lllioo •~lk ~-mc:lilphurlcugnitic) ccr.Anuili119K9: 14ff.J j -mc:lllpburtgnmunuiH:iliJ -o:emnaiii)"Vs.prnphc:ralily -llisiJUI~-rlpru••mily -Kqurntialunkriag - nwdc:llnc:» -~prlllll>ft -unalu;y -grammlllkalislllitWI Figure I. Types oficonicily In imagic iconicity there is a 'direcl'•9 one to one relation between the sign or signifier (usually a morphologically unstructured one) and the signified. miaow signifier I slgaified (direct likeness in sound/word-shape) 'sound made by cal' In diagrammatic iconicity, such a (vertical) direct, concrete relation between signifier and signified is missing. inslead lhere exisl"i an iconic link between the (horizontal) relation(s) on lhe level of lhe signifier and lhe (horizontal) relations on the level of the signified: signifier I signified ve11i -1•idi -l'ici t ! ; I 'event'- 'event'- 'event' (in real world) foot - foot (of mountain) l 'body-part'- 'lowest pan of mountain' Thus, the temporal relation between lhe events taking place in the real world may be iconically reftected in the way in which the signifiers naming these events are ordered on the linguistic level. Such ordering may be lempomlly sequenlial. as in lhe example from Julius Caesar above, or il may be more spatial. concerning notions of distance/proximity and centrality/peripherality. Similarly. in semantic iconicity. e.g. metaphor. it is the sema11tic relation between the signifier foot and ils signified, and lhe .femanric similarity belween a body- object such as 'foot' and the lower pan of a mountain. that leads to the same signifier being used for both. However, even on the imagic level, iconicity continues to play an important role in language and especially in literary language. a.'i quire a number of studies
- 25. INTRODUCTION x;~~;iii presented in this volume show. The imagic relation may be of an oral. aur-dl (acoustic) or tactile type (see the contributions in Part II of this volume. and the general study by F6nagy).10 or they may be of a visual type (cf. the contributions in Part Ill). The latter is especially prominent in playful and highly creative language use, such as in poetry and advertising. As mentioned above and indicated in Figure I. diagrammatic iconicity consists of two types. structural and semantic. In both the semantic and the structural type. it is the perceired relation in meaning between two concepts that leads to the use of the same form or word or the same shape or structure. Sometimes it also works the other way round (i.e. from form to meaning). but this is less usual. An example of this would be flaulll and jlm11: for many speakers they have acquired the same meaning through similarity of form. Similarly. obsequimu developed into a pejorative term through association with other ob·signs. which had a negative ring. like ob.ftreperous. obstinate. obnox- imls. etc. (the last item was also originally non-pejorative). Semantic iconicity (metaphor) is an important source for the creation of new words. and a tool constantly resorted to by poets. Again. it plays a very impor· tant part in language change, since the principle usually called 'analogy' is in fact an instance of metaphor (see e.g. Anttila 1989: 88. 99). In analogy. too, the speaker sees a relation in meaning (often grammatical rather than cognitive) between two items. which may cause him or her to create a new fonn. For e;~~;ample. the use of -ed in the past tense of originally strong verbs (as in burned for earlier bam. helped for earlier halp etc.) developed because of the perceived relationship (in itself arbitrary) between 'pastness' and the 'weak' dental ending -ed. Again. the other way around is also possible. i.e. a sameness in form may influence a word's meaning. but this occurs less frequently. An e;~~;ample is the change in meaning in the Dutch word gijz.elaar 'hostage' (for some speakers even in martelaar 'martyr') from a passive to an agentive noun. Thus. 'gijzelaar' for many speakers of Dutch refers to the hostage-taker rather than to the victim. and 'martelaar' to the torturer rather than to the one tortured. This has happened on the analogy of the more frequent and still productive pattern. wandelaar. moordenaar. goochelaar, etc. (i.e. the one who 'walks'. 'murders'. 'juggles'). More recently, the notion of metaphor has been e;~~;tended to explain unidirectional changes (a type of grammaticalisation) in which expressions used in the ''content domain" (Sweetser 1990: II), i.e. the real world of objects and activities. come to serve to express relationships in the speech-act or metalinguis- tic domain. and from there in the epistemic or rea"'oning domain. Thus. there
- 26. xxiv JNTRODUCfJON seems to be an equation between our physical self and our inner self, which makes us borrow concepts from the socio-physical world. and tr.msfer them metaphorically to our conversational and reasoning world (cf. also F6nagy, Haiman and Nomnan, this volume). This transfer, Sweelser believes (1990: 31), may well be universal. It would explain for instance how root-modals (e.g. OE mwg expres.~~;ing physical ability), develop into deontic modals (may expressing social permission. as in Ycm may gtJ), and additionally acquire epistemic meaning (as in Thi.f may be trlle). Within structural diagrammatic iconicity two types are usually distinguished: isomorphism and iconicity of motivation (cf. Haiman 1980. 1985. and this volume).11 1be fir.n one. Haiman claims. is universal. the second is not. Isomor- phism means that there is a one to one relationship between the signifier and the objecllconcept signified. This can be found on the lexical a."i well as the gram- matical level. It means that Haiman believes that in language the existence of pure synonyms and homonyms is linguistically pathological: it is not a nonnal state. Thus. the usc of French de/it in Middle English next to its native synonym. lu.ft, was occasioned through borrowing. This synonymity. however, was soon 'remedied' through change: /rut and delight are now used in rather different ways. In the ca.ore of homonyms. the situation is often remedied by replacing them with other words. E.g. in the homonymous pair qlteen (OE t-win) - q11ean (OE cwene). the latter has been replaced. Sometimes. an existent variant pronunciation comes to be used to solve the problem. as for instance with the originally homonymic pair t•heer and chair (cf. the pun in Macbeth, Arden ed. V,iii.21). Similarly. in syn1ax. isomorphism enlails thai one cannot really have oplitmal differences in surface slruclure. In other words. the old generative tenet thai several surface structures may have one deep structure, implying that these surface structures all mean the same (because 1ransfonnations which link deep and surface structures are meaning-preserving). is not really possible. Haiman believes that there is complete isomorphism in language. In other words, exceptions to it are either 1emporary. or are motivated independently. as Haiman shows convincingly for a number of synlactic cases. II should be added. though. thai Haiman is more concerned with syntax lhan wilh the lexicon, where such exceptions create less of a problem as long as the non-isomorphous items create no ambiguities in communicative situations. That 1here is a strong avoidance of homonymy among speakers, however. ha.~~; been very convincingly shown by Samuels (1972: 1441f.). when he discussed the reason why most early Middle
- 27. JNTRODUCilON XXV English lei words (e.g. eat.lean. beast) became (i:.) in standard English and not (e:). Although (e:) would have been historically more regular. the choice of (e:) would have created a lot more homonyms. Ungerer and 0. Fischer (this volume) show the role isomorphism may play in the area of word fonnation and syntactic change: in the studies by Haiman and Konmann isomorphism is pre.'ienl as a ba.'lic principle in lhe background too. The other subtype Haiman distinguishes, "iconicily of motivation', is somewhat less abstract than isomorphism. and therefore more noticeable in the more concrete language of literature. Haiman's work on this type of iconicity in "ordinary' language has indeed inHuenced lhe study of iconicily in literary language. Niinny (1986: cf. also Cureton 1981) has shown thai the same parame- ters distinguished under 'iconicity of motivation' in Figure I also play a signifi- cant role in literature. albeit often in a more concrete (more 'imagic') fa.,.hion (see 0. Fischer 1997: 70-77). Thus the linear sequence of verbal signs may be used as an iconic diagram to signify succession in time or space, continuity. change (growth and decay). duration. rank and motion. But syntactic juxtaposi- tion or typographic arrangement may equally function a.o; iconic diagrams to express, for instance. symmetry. balance. relative position, fragmentation. etc. (Niinny 1985). Almost all poetic devices. from typography (Cureton 1986. Niinny 1992). sounds (Epstein 1975. 1978), meter, lineation, stanza-breaks to rhetorical figures (e.g. chiasmus). as well as a large number of narrative techniques may be fruitfully interpreted in tenns of their iconic function with the all-important proviso, however, that the act of interpretation must always proceed from meaning to fonn (Epstein 1978: 28) and not the other way round.ln this volume. Bauer. Halter and Webster look at how typographic space and spacing are used meaningfully in poetry; A. Fischer (in Part Ill) is interested in its use in advertis- ing: and Miiller shows how repetition, sequential ordering and ellipsis is iconically used in prose fiction. Although the temporal relation illustrated in ~·eni. ,·idi. vici. and the meta- phorical one illustrated in foot above. can both be called inslances of diagram- malic iconicity. they also exemplify two different types of diagrams: the first being strictly semiotic in nature (because the diagram connects the linguistic with the non-linguistic). the second more inlnl-linguistic. Johansen ( 1996: 49ft'.) refers to this a.'i 'first-' and 'second-degree' iconicity respectively. First-degree iconicity is semiotic because the order of the signs ~-eni. 'idi. •ici mirrors the order of the events they refer to in the real world. Intra-linguistic iconicity involves a lower degree of iconicity because there is no mirroring of any physical or conceptual
- 28. xxvi INTRODUCTION structure in the outside world. instead there is a relation of similarity between lillguistic .~ig11s bac;ed on the fact that the concepts they refer to show some similarity. To make this difference even clearer. Johansen shows that second- degree iconicity may also play a role in the ~·eni,vidi.~·ici example (following Jakobsen's discussion of this). However, this second-degree iconicity hao; nothing to do with tempoml order but with the linguistic similarity of the signs them- selves (i.e. all three signs start with the same sound. they have two syllables containing a consonant and vowel each. etc.). which reftects and reinforces the similarity between the three activities of Caesar, i.e. the ease of his triumphant conquest. Meier (in this volume) makes a similar 'degree' distinction in his analysis of different types of sound symbolism. which he terms primary and secondary iconicity.1~ When dealing with iconicity, an interdisciplinary approach is almost mandatory. As literature. indeed all verbal art. consists in an elabomtion. an intensification and creative exploitation of the inherent qualities of everyday language. a closer look from a linguist's point of view at how iconicity works in ordinary language is highly instructive for the literary critic too. But the linguist will also greatly profit from a critical examination of the literary use of the iconic potential intrinsic to language, because. as Leech (1987: 68) insists. "it assumes in literature an importance far beyond that which it hao; in everyday language.( ... ! Whereas iconicity has only a minor role in everyday language use. in literature it comes into its own as an important communicative device". The fact that literary iconicity is based on a linguistic potential is just one example of what is true of literary devices in general. most of which also have their roots in ordinary language. Thus, Kiparsky (1987: 186; cf. also Attridge 1987: 17) has pointed out that 'figures of language' studied by poetics, such a.~ alliteration, rhyme, parallel- ism, and metrical form . . and the regularities which may govern their distribution in a work or body of literature, are !{rtmnded in tile lumumlaii- !{IW!{e facu/ry.·: this is why lhey always involve linguistic categories of the son lhat play a role in the grammars of languages. and why the rules governing lhem obey principles that also apply to linguistic rules and representations. (ltali<."S added.)
- 29. INTRODUCTION xxvii As the quotation makes clear, even metrical fonn. which Jakobson (quoted in Kiparsky 1987: 193) still thought to be an exclusive device typical of literary texts. has been shown to be an essential pan of ordinary language a<> well. As Kiparsky (1987: 194). referring to recent developments in metrical phonology. writes: "The basic insight to come out of phonology in the study of supra'eg- mentals is that language itself is metrically organised. By this we mean that language itself has the attributes which we associate with 'metrical' systems". In shan. both linguists and literary critics can immensely profit from the research and iL'i results in the neighbouring discipline. It is for this reason that we have not placed the linguistic and literary studies in this volume in separate sections. We have intenningled the two so as to bring out interdisciplinary similarities. and to show different approaches to a similar topic. In Part I we have a'isembled papers that are of a more fundamental nature. They address basic questions concerning the nature of iconicity. its roots in the human body. its interplay with other semiotic sign categories such as the index. and the relation between iconicity and ritualisation (or convenlionali- sation). One paper also ventilates the problem of how best to approach the phenomenon of iconicity in literary criticism. pleading for a historical approach. Ivan F6nagy. whose work on iconicity goes back to the fifties and who was one of the earliest scholars to resurrect an interest in the phenomenon, shows that iconicity is not something that is marginal to language. but is in fact pan of the foundation of language (and close to the human body). and a ba<;ic principle of live speech. in that all linguistic units used in communication pa<>s. as it were. through an 'iconic filter'. This filter. which has its own externally motivated rules and principles. modifies the internal. conventional rules of grammar. John Haiman approaches the subject of iconicity from a rather different angle, although in his study, too. the human body plays a central role. He looks at how cenain conventional forms of linguistic behaviour (in this case the linguistic activity of self-aba'iement) have developed out of earlier physical activities, which fonn the basis for this behaviour. Or. in other words. how cenain fonns of physical activity may become ritualised. and then funher stylised and gram- maticalised in language. This process he has tenned 'sublimation'. He is interested in how iconicity impoverishes during this process. and panicularly in how the iconic traces remain visible in the gr-dmmaticalised fonns still in use. Ralf Norrman's study on symmetry and asymmetry is also closely linked to the human body. Using a scene from Vonnegut's Slauglrterhou,fe-Fh•e and the text
- 30. xxviii INTRODUCTION of the Peyote hunt of the north·Mexican Huichols. he discusses man's innate symmetricist desire to overcome mortal asymmetry (e.g. of time) by means of inversion or the enantiomorph. To Norrman this desire is deeply iconicist in character as it originates in and reflects the basic symmetry of our bodies. On the level of language this desire is directly expressed in the rhetorical figure of chiasmus and indirectly manifests itself in the five figures of paradox, oxymoron. antithesis, irony and ambiguity. John White discusses various and complex fonns of intemction between the two Peircean sign·functions. iconic and indexical, in selected texts of twentieth-century literature. He starts with a semiotic interpreta- tion of literary footprints in Defoe. Eco and H0eg. He then looks at Nabokov. who thematises semiotic interplay. and at Handke's use of dysfunctional semi· osis. Next he analyses a Futurist text by Marinelli and its exploitation of the typogr.aphic interplay between iconicity and indexicality. Finally. he scrutinises Hare's film Pari.tby Night for indexical iconic elements. Simon Alderson pleads for a historical frame-working of iconicity in literature. Using a historical approach. he discusses a number of examples of iconicity in some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prose texts. and the limitations of eighteenth-century literary theorising on iconicity. Starting with Pope's "The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense", he discusses the experimental and piece-meal application of this principle to prose, as well as Fielding's and Sterne's interest in the iconic potential of physical book space. He then discusses romantic critics. who began to privilege the relation between language and mind. Alderson argues that we ought to consider contemporary expectations about what counts a." reality and the way literary language can be made to match up to that reality. Part// contains papers that focus on iconic features connected with sound and rhythm. Andreas Fischer addresses a fundamental question: how exactly can speech-sounds be said to be iconic. He distinguishes three different categories of phonological iconicity: auditory. articulatory and associative. The first is clearly imagic. the second is both imagic- it imitates spatial or dimensional meaning- and diagrammatic, because the spatial contra.'ts expressed may be used to express any kind of contra.'! by a.'sociation. The last category is of a purely diagrammatic type. i.e. there is no 'mirroring' of sounds. instead the use of certain sounds depends primarily on how other sounds within the same linguistic system are used. The relations themselves. however. are clearly motivated (above. this wa.'i tenned 'second-degree' iconicity). Hans Heinrich Meier approaches the same question from a historical angle. He first reviews how linguists in our century
- 31. INTRODUCTION :uix have tried to ignore and/or belittle the iconic dimension in phonology. In great detail. he discusses their quantitative Ciconicity applies to only a very small number of linguistic items") and qualitative objections ("the iconic form is not fixed and therefore cannot be truly iconic"). showing that their conception of iconicity is too restricted. Next he turns to linguists of the iconic persuasion. reviewing the development of their ideas and discussing their use of terminology. Special attention is given to the use of phonaesthemes in a diagrammatic way. on both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic level. Finally. having provided a thorough classification and analysis of facts. Meier considers the unifying factor behind them. which is contained in the speaker. in the prod/Ktirm of iconicity. Turning now from the segmental to the suprasegmental level. we have a contribution by Walter Bernhart on the semiotic status of poetic rhythm. Basing his argument on Edith Sitwelrs and William Walton's Farade. Bernhart analyses the poem's imitative rhythm and sound-elfects as iconic but also as non-iconic. experiential features: and taking the effect of sound and rhythm on the recipient into account. he perceives their "emotionally based indexical sign-function". Part Ill deals with the visual aspects of language and litcr.1ry texts. Insisting that all iconicity is semantically motivated and distinguishing between tr.msparent. translucent and subliminal letter-icons. Max Nanny investigates how single alphabetic letters ('I', ·c· and especially '0'). which have always been seen to be merely conventional or 'symbolic' signs, have sometimes been used by mainstream authors since Shakespeare as imagic icons of objects (pillar: crescent: earth. sun. moon. star. eye. opening) or of concepts such a.'i perfection and circularity. Michael Webster discusses the iconic means used by E.E. Cummings in his picture-poems in order to express the notions of 'being' and 'nothing'. He shows how the poet counterpoints rhythmic patterns to the verbal-visual rhythms of lineation. Matthias Bauer offers a thorough interpretation in iconic terms of George Herbert's "Coloss. 3.3". in which nearly every kind of iconic. especially diagrammatic. representation can be found. pointing out that this pervasive iconicity corresponds to the seventeenth-century world view. which was con- trolled by concepts of similarity in all spheres. Bauer's study of one poet's iconic tendencies covers so much ground that it cannot really be confined to this section. it belongs to Part II as well. Peter Halter deals with the range and subtlety of iconic devices in W.C. Williams's 'visual texts', with Williams's regard for the poem on the page that parallels his interest in the visual arts and
- 32. XXX JNTRODUCilON design. On the basis of a close reading of a selection of lyrics. Halter analyses and interprels iconic renderings of the perception of objects in space (Tabakow· ska, below. refer.; to this as 'experiential" iconicity), of the saccadic eye and of the complex interaction of motion and emotion. He also discusses iconic uses of the stanza form and the lextual mirroring of moments of hesitation. changes of directions. 'turns'. Andreas Fischer and Eva Lia Wys..., show how a special. iconic use of typogro1phy ha.'l also reached the world of advertising and the inlemel. Fischer analyses various examples of how space (including absence of space) and rypography reinforce the meaning of the texl. Wyss concentrates on the playful manner in which ASCII signs may be manipulated in e-mail messages to add to the meaning conveyed by conventional typography. One reason for doing this, she argues, is that e-mail communication is an intermediary type between spoken and written lexL-.. in which lhere is a need for fealures of spoken lext lo be represenled visually. II should nol come as a surprise.lherefore.lhal quite of few of these new iconic signs have already become conventionalised. In the fourtlr Part, Friedrich Ungerer turns from the word proper. where iconicity plays a role bolh imagically and diagrammatically (see Part 2). to word-formation phenomena. where iconicity is always diagrammatic. eilher of an 'isomorphic' or of a 'motivaled' type (see Figure 1). All word-formation. Ungerer argues, begins with a violation of the original signifier/signified (fonnlconcept) correlation. i.e. a disturbance of isomorphism. But. as Ungerer shows. since the aim in word- formalion is to produce new l'iahle words, the ultimale resull is a new isomor- phic relation. He shows how this new balance is achieved or near-achieved in entirely differenl ways in the formalion of compounds, blends and acronyms. Derivation is shown to be a different process because here the isomorphism between the lexical base and the concept it stands for remains largely untouched. This is also true for clippings even though the form of the lexical base is affecled. Ingrid Piller is interested in a very specific area of word-formalion. viz. words that are purposefully created to function a." brand names. This may indeed involve entirely new words (in which case phonological iconicity oflen plays a role). bul much more frequently exisling words are used wilh a new signification. The choice of the exisling word is always motivated; it is in this sense lhal iconicity is present in the creation of brand names. Piller distinguishes three main types of diagrammalic iconicily in this area: lhe product is named by means of (I) foreign or (2) technological words in order lo indicate a connotation with a
- 33. INTRODUCTION xxxi certain culture or field of action, or (3) the syntax of the brand name is itself modelled as an iconic structure. In Part V. syntax and discourse stand at the centre of a scrutiny from an iconic angle. Olga Fischer looks at the role iconicity plays in syntactic change, particu- larly in processes of grammaticalisation. She argues that gmmmaticalisation is not necessarily a unidirectional process. steered semantically. as is usually maintained. but that the process may also be reversed. due to underlying iconic principles. She first discusses a number of general principles that play a role in grammaticalisation, such as analogy. isomorphism. metaphorical shift etc.. which are all iconically based. After this she investigates two specific cases of syntactic change in English, the development of the semi-modal verb have lo. and the reversal in the grammaticalisation of the infinitival marker lo. in both of which iconic principles play a crucial role. Bernd Kortmann's study goes a step beyond iconicity. He starts from the (iconic) assumption that the structure of language in some way reflects the structure of experience. Based on this idea. he asks himself the question what a typological or cross-linguistic study of language structures can tell us about the structure of human cognition. He restricts himself to one linguistic domain. namely adverbial subordinators. He analyses their morphology and semantics and makes this the basis for formulating hypotheses on the internal structure of the semantic space of adverbial relations. Thus. he finds. for instance. that the simplest morphemic structures correlate with the core relations of this semantic space, 'core' in terms of discourse necessity and frequency. Another claim Kortmann makes is that there is a connection between degrees of morphological complexity and degrees of cognitive complexity. Wolfgang MUller explores the iconic potential of British and American fiction discussing the iconic function of ellipsis (which stands for silence. absence of action). of paratactic and often a:'iyndetic syntax {representing a sequence of events. simultaneity and emotion. changing processes of perception). He finally shows analogical relations between the structure of syntax and a novel's overdll structure. Eli:bieta Tabakowska notes that much research has been done into the relationship between the way in which linguistic elements are ordered (their syntax) and the order of human perception. especially in terms of temporal sequencing. However. the relation between fonn and meaning. between text and conceptual structure, can also be motivated by the 'order of knowledge'. In fact. Tabakowska a.'iks the same type of question as Kortmann above, but she wishes to test her hypothesis not by means of a typological comparison. but by looking
- 34. xxxii INTRODUCTION althe way elements are ordered in one particular leXt- a history of Europe. that ha..; the function of a guidebook as well as a chronicle - where one would expect perceptual or experiential ioonicity to underlie the text strategy. She shows that the author of the text in question exploits the conventions of experiential iconicity in order to impose his own world-view on the reader: that is. he shifts the experiential principle from the perceptual to the conceptual level. Notes I. It is ialeresling dull Fcnullosa n:fcrs lo Laocoon in lhis conleU. for uJso Lessing in his classic Ltmkoon diKusses lhe ap1nen of lhe dift"erem media. lhe visual arts und lilmdure for lhe reprcsmlalion of space and time. By arguing thin thr visual arts are betler ~uilftllo represent spaliuJ ohjccls and lhatlilcrlllure is be5tsuitcd to Cll.pK551imc (d. also Jakob;on 1971a: 341}. Lessing's dcbale - as has not been generally recognised - was c:ow:nly dclennincd by lhe principles or llimilarity or. as we now call it. iconicity. Howew:r. in the tweNiech cenwry we han leamtthat 11. viSWI.I work of art may represent tempor.al processes and a literary text may have spatial dimcnsioD!i. 2. Pound's definition of the 'imqe' also conlains a temporal dimension: "An 'I~JW~e' is that which presenl5 on intelleclual and emolionlll complex in on instant of time" (Pound 1954: 4). 1bc briefness of an 'imasc' is meant to be iconic of the briefness of "an instant of time". 3. Such CIISCS of folk etymology are U5ually DOl the result of wtuu we below will call 'first-dcgrft' iconicity. i.e.they are not i&."Oitic in a purely semiotic: sense.lnnunly in an intra·linJuillic: sense. 4. 1bc development from an ironic to a symbolic phase in children (and bolh in tum pm:c:ded by on indexical stqe) is also recognized in ~tudies in developmemal and cognitiw: psychology {e.g. in the worlr. of Je1111 Pillget). as poinled out by Johansen I1996: Js....-40). Howew:r. Johan.wn notes quite c:orTCCtly that "even the simplest process of sigo intcrpmation necessarily includes inllcxic:al. iconic: IIOd symbolic aspcclli"" (p. 38). and ttuu recognition of these three dew:lopmcn- tal phuscs does 1101 mean ''that the two e11.rlicr stages lll't' transitory and lose their importance" (p. 39).1n this volume. Bemtuut and While reconsider the relation between the three types of sign. especially the interplay between index and iCOR. in a number of lite~ lell.l5 and in lilm. 1bcy likcwio;c t'OIIt'ludc thai there arc oo "fixed type' or signs·· (Bernhart) or lhat signs tend to "occur in hybrid ruther than pure (orm" (White). S. In literature. writers. in onlcr to highlight the 'poetic function' of langu~Je in their texts. haw: had n:coursc to iconicity to incn:;u;c "the palpability of sipul" (Jalr.obson 1960: 356) 01" to "hypcrscnwnticize" poctic language (Cun:ton 1980: 319). Among ochers. Leech and Short (19111b) and Bronzwaer (1993) haw: pointed to the pei'Yasiw:ness of ic:oaidty in literature. It must be particularly poimed out lha!. the Peirce-Jakobson dislinc:tion betWftll ict1nic imasc and iconic di~~:nun (sec also below) Jw. pnwcd of great usc when applird to litcnuy texts.
- 35. ll'ITRODUCTION xxxiii 6. !conicity in pidgins and creoles is highlighted among olhe!'ll by Romaine (1988) and in e:o;amples given in Haiman ( 1980) and Todd (1984). 7. Plank (1979) and GivtKI (1985. 1994), among othel'll. have wriuen on iconic principles !hat play a mle in language change, and Fischer (1994) Mows. by means of a case study. how GivOn's iconic principle of proximity may have functioned in a syntactK: change in the history of English. !!. FOnagy's use of "primary" and "secondary" code is similar to lhe primary and secondary codes distinguished by Lotman (1972) (and see also Bmnzwuer 1993: 24[.), However. for Lotman, the secondary c;ode belongs es.~ntially to the 'poetic function' of lunguuge ('poetic' in its Jakobsonian sense) and thus is not always present, whereas F6nagy stresses that all live speet::h is modified by the 'Distoner'. Set::ondly, Lotman·~ secondary code involves both first and second degR:C konicity (for the tenns see below), i.e. similarities motivated both semiotically ami purely linguistically, whereas the roles of the Distorter seem to be ba.~ically motivated by (our interpretation ol) the ouLside world. 9. This 'direct' relation is 0111 without it~ problems. The existenc;e of the relation of cou111e always depend~ on the illtt>rpretaticm of the speaker. For this reason, Peirce (and this is quite usual in semiotks. d. NO!h 1990) U5ell a so-c;allcd triadic system. whkh distinguishes between the signifier (in Peirce's tenns the 'repre.o;entamen'),lhe signified (Peirce's 'object') and the sense that is made of the sign by the language user (Peirce's 'interpretant'). Becau!lt the konic relation that i.~ felt to e11.ist i.~ in fact an interpretation on the pan of the speaker/listener. it must be deur !hat the relation between signifier and signified is not fixed or crystal dear. Jakobson (1971c: 700) thus corret:!ly remarks that even icon~ are panly symbolic. ''the full apprehension of pktures and diagrams requires a learning process. No painting is devoid of ideogr.•pbic, symbolic elenw:nL~", thu~ showing that there is no simple c;ontra.'il between i~'OOS and symbols; rather, they an: on a cline (for this, see also A. Fisc;her in Set::tion 2 of this volume). 10. And ,o;ee also the very interesting. intenlisplinary c:ollet::tion of studies on Snund Symbolism. edited by Leanne Hinton, Joanna Nichols and John Ohala (1994), which shows again how pervasive imagic iconidly still is in language. II. Giv6n (1985: 188-189) does not follow this distinction. For him. isomorphi.~m is a meta- principle, underlying konicity, it is not a motivation or explanation of ic:onicity. 0. f'isc:ber (this volume) argues !hat the motivalion behind the two types i.~ basic;ally the same and !hat therefore there may be no need to distinguish them. 12. It is imponant to note that Johansen's fil'llt- and :;econd-degree i~'Oflicity, is no! the same as lyons' 'primury' and 'Set::ondary' iconidty. mentioned by A. fisc:her in his study in Pan II. and also not the same as Tabllkowdta's distinction. in this volume. For lyons and Tubakowska primary iconidty is what we have termed here 'imagic' iconicity. Their secondary konicity involves all diagr.unmatic types.
- 36. xxxiv INTRODUCTION References Aitchison. Jean. 1996. The SeedJ of Speech. Language Origi11 mrd Evolutimr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anttila. Raimo. 1989. (2nd ed). Hislorical and Comparalive lingui.{fics. Amster- dam: Benjamins. Attridge, Derek. 1987. ''Closing Statement Linguistics and Poetics in Retro- spect''. In Nigel Fabb et al. (eds). 15-32. Auster. Paul. 1987. City ofGia.u. Hannondsworth: Penguin. Bolinger. Dwight. 1980. LLmguage- The Loaded Weapon. London: Longman. Bolinger. Dwight and D.A Sears. 1981 (3rd ed.). Aspect.{ of LLmguage. New York: Harcourt. Brace, Jovanovich. Bronzwaer. W. 1993. Le.{.WI in Lyriek. Nieuwe Nederltmdse Poi!rica. Nijmegen: Sun. Cureton. Richard. 1980. ''Poetic Syntax and Aesthetic Fonn". Style 14.4: 318-340. Cureton. Richard. 1986. "Visual Fonn in E.E. Cummings' No Thanks". m,rtJ & Image 2: 245-77. Epstein. E.L. 1975. ''The Self-Reflexive Artefact: The Function of Mimesis in an Approach to a Theory of Value for Literature". In Roger Fowler (ed.). Style cmd Struclllre in Literature: E.uays ill rile New Stylistic.{. Oxford: Blackwell. 40-78. Epstein. E.L. 1978. Language a11d Style. London: Methuen. Fabb. Nigel, Derek Attridge. A. Dur.mt and Colin MacCabe. (eds). 1987. The linguistics of Writing. Arguments berween Language and Liierarure. Man- chester: Manchester University Press. Fischer. Olga. 1994. "The Development of Quasi-Auxiliaries in English and Changes in Word Order". Neophilologus 78: 137-64. Fischer. Olga. 1997. ''lconicity in Language and Literature. Language Innovation and Language Change". Neuphilologi.{c·he Miueilu11ge11 98: 63-87. FOnagy. Ivan. 1980. La mhaplrore en plwm!tique. Ottawa: Didier. FOnagy, Ivan. 1995. "lconicity of Expressive Syntactic Fonnations". In Lands- berg (ed.). 285-304. GivOn. Talmy. 1985. "lconicity, Isomorphism and Non-Arbitrary Coding in Syntax". In J. Haiman (ed.). 187-219. Giv6n. Talmy. 1994. "Isomorphism in the Grammatical Code: Cognitive and Biological Considerations". In Rafaele Simone (ed.). 47-76.
- 37. INTRODUCTION x;v;;v;v Haiman. John. 1980. '"The lconicity ofGr.tmmar: Isomorphism and Motivation''. La11guage 56: 515-40. Haiman. John. 1983. "Iconic and Economic Motivation'".l.Anglfage 59: 781-819. Haiman. John. 1985a. (ed.). /conicity in Symax. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Haiman. John. 1985b. Naftlral Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haiman. John. 1993. "Life. the Universe. and Human Language (a Brief Synop- sis)". Lang11age Science.~ 15: 293-322. Hinton. Leanne. Joanna Nichols. and John J. Ohala. 1994. (eds). Sound S)·mbol- i.mt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jakobson. Roman. 1960. "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics". In Thomas Sebeok. (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge. Mass.: M.l.T. Press. 350-77. Jakobson. Roman. 197la. "The Relation between Visual and Auditory Signs". In Selet·ted Writi11g.f. Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton. 338-44. Jakobson. Roman. 197lb. "Quest for the Essence of Language [1965)". Selected Writing.r. Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton, 345-59. Jakobson. Roman. 197lc. "Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems". Selected Writing.f. Vol. II: Word and Langlwge. The Hague: Mouton. 697-708. Johansen. J0rgen Dines. 1996. "lconicity in Literature". Semiotica 110: 37-55. Kermode. Fr-dnk. 1975. (ed.) Selected Pro.re ofT.S. Eliot. London: Faber and Faber. Kiparsky. Paul. 1987. "On Theory and Interpretation".Jn Nigel Fabb et al. (eds). 185-98. Landsberg. Marge E. 1995 (ed.). Syntactic /conicity and Linguistic Free:.es. Tile Human Dimension. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker. Ronald W. 1977. "Syntactic Reanalysis". InC. Li. (ed.). Mechani.mu ofSyntactic Clrange. Austin: University of Texas Press. 57-139. Lccercle. Jean-Jacques. 1990. The Violence ofLanguage. London: Routledge. Leech. Geoffrey N. 1987. "Stylistics and Functionalism". In Nigel Fabb et al. (eds). 76-88. Leech. Geoffrey N. and Michael H. Short. 1981a. S1yle i11 Fictio11. London: Longman. Leech, Geoffrey N. and Michael Short. 198lb. "!conicity: The Imitation Princi- ple". Chapter 7.7 of Style in Fiction. London: Longman. 233-43. Liebcnnan. Philip. 1991. Uniquely Huma11. The Evo/wion ofSpeech, Tho11ght. and Selftes.~ Belun·ior. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Pres.-.. Lotman. Juri. 1972. Die Stmktur literarisclrer Texte. Mi.inchen: Fink.
- 38. xxxvi INTRODUCTION Niinny. Max. 1985. "Iconic Dimensions in Poetry". In R. Wa.o;wo (ed.). On Poetry and PonicJ. Swiss Paper.{ in En~:lisiJ I..AIIf:llOf:e and Literat11re 2. Tilbingen: Gunter Narr. 111-35. Niinny. Max. 1986. "lconicity in Litero~.ture". Word & Image 2: 199-208. Niinny. Max. 1992. "Functions of Visual Form in T.S. Eliot's Poetry". In V. Sena and R. Verma (cds). The Fire a11d the Ro.{e. New EsJays 011 T.S. Eliot. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 98-116. NOth. Winfried. 1990. Handbook ofSemiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Plank, Frans. 1979. "lkonisierung und De-lkonisierung als Prinzipien des Sprachwandels". Sprachwissen.n·haft 4: 121-58. Pontecorvo. Clotildc. 1994. "!conicity in Children's First Written Texts". In Rafaele Simone (ed.). 277-307. Pound, Ezra. 1921. ··poesies 1917-1920: Jean Cocteau". Dia/10. I: 110. Pound. Ezm. 1954. Liierary £.~say.~ ofE:ra Pmmd. (Ed.) T.S. Eliot. New York: New Directions. Pound. Ezra. 1964. (ed.) Ernest Fenollosa. The Chine.~e Wrillen Character a.~ a Medium for Poetry. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Romaine. Suzanne. 1988. Pidgin and Creole Ltmguage.~. London: Longman. Samuels. Michael L. 1972. Lingui.{tic E~·ol11tion. With Special Reference to English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simone. Rafaele. 1994. (ed.)./conicity in Umg11age. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Simpson. David. 1978. "Pound's Wordsworth: Or Growth of a Poet's Mind". £11glislr Literary History 45: 660--86. Slobin. Dan I. 1985. '"The Child a.o; a Linguistic Icon-Maker". In John Haiman (ed.). 111-48. Stampe. David. 1979. A Dissertation on Nalllral Phonology. New York: Garland. Sweetser. Eve E. 1990. From Erymology to Pragmmics. Metaphorical a11d Culwral A~pect.~ ofSemantic Stmcture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Todd, Loreto. 1984. Moder11 Eng/i.{hes: Pidgins and Creoles. Oxford: Blackwell.
- 39. PART I General
- 40. I. lntrocluc:tion Why Iconicity? Ivan F6nagy Hrmgoriun A,·udemy ofScience Jconicity. far from being a marginal verbal kind of play. is a basic principle of live speech. and more generally. of nalurallanguages. Speech units - speech-sounds. words. utterances - are the product of a dual encoding procedure. All linguistic units - phonemes. lexemes. phrases, sentence."' - generated by the Grammar have to pas."' in live speech through a Distorter (or Modifier) conveying complementary messages, integrated into the original linguistic message. 1be principles which govern observable distortions are preverbal (gestural, in a broad sense) and pristine. The dialectic play between Grammar and Distorter ha.~; the capacity of generaling an infinite variety of complex messages. I would like to illustrate the functioning of the proposed model of dual e11ctHli11g in live speech. selling oul from the analysis of an X-ray sound piclure of emolive speech. allempling to define the principles of expressive diSiortion in sound production. conceived as oral gesluring. and show the interplay of iconicity and convention in live speech. Speet·h melody can be conceived in lerrns of virtual bodily gesluring. Recurrenl (stained) vocal and prosodic distortions form a vocal mask (per.folw) reHecting intimate personality lraits 'hidden at the surface'. The analysis of emotive speech allows for a beuer understanding of lhe elusive concept of ,ft)'le. The Distorter of the proposed model operales on all linguist:ic levels. General rules covering expres..o;ive dislortions can be exlended lo the level of
- 41. IVAN f6NAGY syntax. and semantics. and may encompa.o;s even the creative (poetic) use of punctuation marks. The guided regression to a preverbal and preconceptual level of verbal and mental evolution is also the source of d)•11amic S)'nl.:hnmy (liveliness). and the motor of li11guis1ic cha11ge. 2. Live speech 2.1 Oral ges111ring Why do we oppose live speet:lr to dead leiters? - "... the written word is but a scanty reproduction of live speech and lively discourse". objects Phaidra to Socrates in Plato's dialogue Phaidra (276a). 2.1.1 Oral mimelic.f ill U11rela1ed languages adio-cinematographic recordings (X-ray pictures) of emotive speech clearly show that the same basic emotions and emotive anitudes elicit similar phonetic strategies in unrelated languages. French and Hungarian actresses were invited to pronounce banal sentences, mostly the same sentence. for expressing different ba.o;ic emotions - anger. hatred, tenderness. joy and fear; and some emotive attitudes such a.o; MENACE (F6nagy 1976. F6nagy. Han. Simon 1983). ANGER and HATRED induce a higher muscular tension in the speech organs; conse- quently the contact surface between aniculalors in unvoiced plosives (p.t.k) is larger (sometimes doubled) as compared to neutral speech. The heightened articulatory effort radically modifies timing. AGGRESSIVE altitudes increase the durations of consonants (especially of 'hard' consonants. such as p,l, k) and shorten that of vowels. The fonnula duration (pJ,k I Vowels) could offer a reliable measure of the degree of aggressivity. ANGER and HATRED elicit spasmodic tongue movements - short transitions are followed by a stiffening of the longue preceding a second short transition. In TENDER speech, the articulation is smooth: the transitions are slower. more gradual. In the display of MENACE the recordings show that the arliculalion of 11 is characterized by a triadic mimetic performance: (a) in a first pha.o;e the tongue is strongly retracted. the dorsum vaulted 'like a bow': (b) it is
- 42. WHY !CONICITY'! maintained in this position: (c) finally projected towards the hard palate 'like an arrow'. Oral mimicry is particularly striking in the rolled apical Hungarian r pronounced in ANGER: the tongue is strongly erected. and first resists the pressure of the outflowing air: deflected from its initial position. it resumes its erect state four or five times (in neutral speech the tongue vibrates mostly twice). Electro-myographic measurement of expiratory muscles and tomographic recordings of the larynx reflect similar gestural strategies: ANGER and HA- TRED involve a forceful innervation of the glottal muscles. which induces a narrow constriction of the glottal space (F6nagy 1958. 1962). The vocal folds are squeezed. the false vocal cords are compresscd.ln spite of considerable expirato- ry effort the produced sound is generally less loud than the voice generated in TENDER speech by means of a slight expiratory effort. and relaxed laryngeal muscles. The ratio acoustic energy I physiological energy is considerably lower for agressive emotions than in tender emotions. (It seems that aggressivity doesn't pay. at least in sound production.) Let me just mention some further phonetic gestures common to French and Hungarian emotive speech. as observed through the cine-radiogr.tphic recordings. The maxillary angle and the vertical labicd distance generally increase in simulated ANGER. Lips are retracted in both anger and hatred. In TENDER speech the lips are protruded and rounded. The tongue is advanced for positive feelings. such as JOY and TENDERNESS. and withdrawn in negative emotions. such as ANGER. HATRED or SCORN. The tongue is raised in JOY and lowered in SADNESS or INDIFFERENCE. 2.1.2 Pho11etic paradoxes The mea.o;urements yield some paradoxical results. A semi-close (mid) vowel such as e may be closer than the closest i vowel. In the Hungarian i11 'I', in the indignant exclamation £11.1 ." 'I?!' expressing hatred. the mid-vowel comes closer to the palate - due to tense articulation (contr.tction) - than in the close vowel phoneme Iii in /gen. pronounced with loose articulation. reflecting indifference and boredom. This means that a kind of draHi-croist took place.1
- 43. Hungarian Phonological level lei Iii IVAN F6NAGY --> Phonetic level Iii (e( Similarly. in the French recordings, the ly/, the Ia:/ were dilabialized in faint anger or contempt, and. in contra-distinction.li/ and /e/ were pronounced (y) and (cr:( in the display of a tender approach: [mre: sy: ] in Mais si, ~·oymts.' French lit lei --> (y( (oe( Such phonetic paradoxes are quite current in emotive speech. 2.2 A model ofdual encoding 2.2.1 Grammar and Distorter (icmtic encoding) To account for such phonetic paradoxes I proposed a model of dual encodi11g procedure in a previous paper (197)).1n a first stage the GRAMMAR produces a sequence of phonemes. such as Hungarian /e: nJ nT . ligen/ /ge""Ye.'i': or French /me si vwajO/ Mai.{ si, myon.r. In a second phase. the phoneme-sequence has to go through a DISTORltR or MODIFIER which transforms lei into (i]. Iii into (e] in the Hungarian unerances: le/ into [oe] and /if into (y] in the French utterance. Since these sounds are unacceptable in the given context. the hearer traces them back to the phonemes generated by the Grammar. Thus. for the French hearer the (oe] in the sequence (m0] moe111 'he grinds' would make no sense: no more than would .mr. past perfect of suvoir. He automatically re- establishes /e/, comprehending mais. and /if, comprehending si. and interprets the distortions as an additional gesture: tender lip-rounding. SPEAKER (oe( (y( HEARER lei + tendemes..'i Iii + tenderness
- 44. WHY ICONICITY? 1be emotive value of the speech sound is due to the act of distonion and not to the produced speech sound a.o; such. The glottal Slop ("1] inserted before or after a vowel in English, Gennan. French or Hungarian. expresses anger, emphasis or military discipline. SPEAKER DISTORTER HEARER /vowel/ -+ ("1 +vowel] -+ vowel + empha.o;is/anger This is not the case in languages where f1l functions as a phoneme. and is already present at the in-put. as in Classical Arabic natal 'he loses': SPEAKER DISTORTER HEARER f1 +vowel/ -+ off -+ vowel (neutral attitude) 1be naive English or Hungarian hearer might. however. be tempted to interpret the output signal in the frame of his own phonological system. and perceive (7ata] as a distorted /atal. A four year old Hungarian girl. watching the TV interview of an Arabian diplomat, a.o;ked her father. somewhat frightened: "Why is he so angry?" 2.2.2 Rules ofdi.fWrtion Both. GRAMMAR and DISTORTER. are rule-governed. However. the rules governing expressive distortions essentially differ from grammatical rules producing phoneme-sequences. For instance, rules producing phonetic distortions are always motivated. i("(mk. Phonemic encoding is always digital (discrete).the rules of distortion are mostly gradient (Lotz 1950. Sebeok 1952. Scherer 1985). I attempted in a previous paper (1971) to outline the principles governing expressive oral gesturing. I. First principle: Voluntary reprodltctim•ofsymptoms associated with the vocal apparatus: Pllaryngeal contraction in negative emotions such as HATRED or CONTEMPT. may illustrate the first principle. The contraction of pharyngeal muscles accompa- nies naruea; and may express attitudes derived from nausea, such as DISLIKE and CONTEMPT (as shown by Trojan 1952. 1975. and interpreted from a psycho-
- 45. IVAN F6NAGY analytic perspective by Fenichel. 1946). The French metaphoric cliche Je le 1·omi.{ 'I hate this chap' (lit.: 'I vomit him') clearly identities contempt and vomiting. Similarly, laryngeal closure. followed by a violent outburst is a sign of discomfort in infants. "a glottal attack of discomfort" (Unlu.weimat:.) according to Gurzmann (1928 (1926]). and can be considered as a biological metaphor of a cough; a reHex which serves to eliminate under high subglottal pressure harmful corpuscules. preventing them from entering the lungs. By extension the reHex appears a" a sign of refusal and rejection. Emphatic glottal plosives could be seen as symbolic performances of ejecting an internal 'bad object' or rejecting an unwanted person. 2. According to a second principle. the movements of the speech organs may substitute for bodily gestures. The French poet and phonetician. Andre Spire. interprets articulation ao; a "dance of the speech organs" (1986 (1949]). In the course of language acquisition the movements of the tongue tend to follow the movement of the hand. Thus. the child produces an i sound by advancing the tongue. while pointing with his forefinger at an object wanted (as observed by Walpurg.a Raffier-Engel 1983). A nine month old girl imitates. inversely. the extrusion of the tongue of the adult by raising her forefinger (Werner and Kaplan 1963: 86). The forward motion of the tongue in joy and tenderness may represent a physical and moral approach to the partner. a friendly attitude (German entgegen- kommeml 'friendly' lit.: 'coming to meet'). The backward motion of the tongue in hostile emotions and in sadness corresponds to a physical and moral with- dr.twal. In contr.tdistinction. the tongue approaches the alveolcs pronouncing /i/ when we are high spirited. The violent contraction of the tongue muscles may substitute for the contraction of arm muscles. More generally. muscular contraction on glottal and oral level may substitute for a violent global effort of the whole body. e.g.. in preparing for a fight. Lips and tongue may perform symbolic gestures. The increased maxillary angle in anger or the incisors biting the lower lip allude to oral aggression: biting and swallowing. It could be considered as an aBusive gesture. The anticipation of a kiss in tender lip rounding is equally allusive. Other gestures could be labeled as emcali·e. Labialization of vowels or palalization of consonants may recall the speech of small children whose articulation is generally more labial
- 46. WHY ICONICITY? and more palatal than those of adults; involuntary mimicking is either symptom- alic or symbolic. 3. A third principle governing vocal gesturing is quanlitative isomorphism of expression and content: different degrees of intensity. heighl and duration reflect different degrees of excitement or semantic inlensity. Speed of utlerance corresponds, for instance. to different degrees of excitement (Mahl and Schulze 1964). The presuppositions underlying vocal gesturing have little in common with conversational maxims (Grice 1975). They are much closer lo lhe way of thinking reflected in magical performances. The speaker. who in anger or hatred speaks with a strangled voice. throttles his own throat. inlending to annihilale a person present or absent. This a.-.sumption is quile similar to those supporting .Q'mpmhelic or imi1o1it:e magic. The identification of the part wilh the whole (the speech organs wilh the body) is a basic principle of contagious magic (frazer 1964(1890(: 45. 621f.). 2.2.3 /conicity ond mnl'enlion Edward Stankiewiecz discusses in his paper on emotive language the emotive use of phonetic features. He refers to Huichol (Amerindian) adults. who palatalize ('moisten') the consonants in speaking to children: and to Basque. where dental consonants are moistened in tender speech (1964: 429 ff.). In Spanish. palatali- zation has a similar connotation (Porras 1978). The moistening of r and I is perceived in lhe Russian dialect of Kolyma a'i 'sweetish' (parter mielle11.x, dor~cereux, sladkoglasye). In all these cases. the more palatal pronunciation of small children may account for the affectionate or sweetish connotalion of palatalization (little children are so 'sweet'). But how to interpret emotive palatalization in Soulh-Eastern Yiddish dialects. where moistening of dental consonants and r carries a pejorative meaning. and reflect scorn and disgust (Siankiewicz 1964: 249)'? This time. we could be lempted to consider the value of emotive distonion as quite arbitrary. In fact. there is a simple and close associative link between moistening and disgust or scorn. We know that nausea gives rise to increased salivation. Disgust and scorn are biological transfers of nausea. 1be emotional value of palataliza- tion is entirely motivated. though it has a quite different motivation of that of 'sweelish' speech. Nasalizalion of vowels frequently reflects boredom (Trojan 1952: 158). 5Uperciliousness or irony (F6nagy. Han, Simon 1983): "it is not worth the trouble
- 47. 10 IVAN F6NAGY to raise the velum". The same oral gesture may express longing or desire. since sexual arousal regularly lowers the velum (Trojan I.e .. Leon 1981). The two concepts - arbitmry and cmn'elltional - must be kept distinct when discussing iconicity. All signs are conventionaJ by definition. and may be more or less motivated (iconic).2 2.3 Voml style Vocal communication based on voluntary reproduction of symptoms or on aJlusive partial reproduction of actions are already present in infra-human communication. The main difference between human speech. on the one hand. and animal communication and anificiallanguage. on the olher. is the integration of verbal and preverbal messages in n<~turnl human language. The two messages. representing two modes of communication separated by some hundred thousand years. are intimately and pennanently linked in live speech. The links between phonemic representation. and the two divergent messages are so perfectly integr.1ted that vocal messages are not perceived as messages in their own right. The 'way of pronouncing' or mea/style. can be conceived as an originally independent non-verbal. pre-conceptual message. thoroughly integrated into the (logically) primary verbal message. conveyed by a sequence of phonemes:' This definition could be extended to personal vocal and verbal style. conceived as a recurrent (more or les pennanent) message emined involuntarily by the same person.(4) A functional interpretation of vocal style in the frame of a model of dual encoding may facilitate the approach to other levels of verbal style. 2.4 Pro.mdic ge.~turing Our perception of speech melody is essentially dynamic. We perceive intonation as a movement. "We could speak of rise and fall. of height and depth". wrote Aristoxenus (first century A.D.) in his Hcmmmisticfragmems. and he adds: "The rise is a continuous movement of the voice from a deeper to a higher level, and the fall is a movement of a higher level to a deeper one'' (Marquard ed. 1868: 15).5 A dynamic theory of intonation is implicitly contained in the Hungarian tenn hcmglejtb 'intonation', lit.: 'vocal dance'. We have to distinguish thoroughly between direct laryngeal gesturing at the glottal level - changes of the glottal configuration. tension and relaxation of intrinsic laryngeal muscles - on the one hand. and indirect and projective tonal
- 48. WHY !CONICITY'! II gesturing by means of virtual spatial pitch movements. on the other: a first and second degree of symbolization. Just ao; in the case of oral and glottal gesturing. there are conspicuous similarities in the expression of ANGRY QUARREL in French and Hungarian.6 In both cao;es. the melodic movement is characterized by a fast pace: a rigid metrical pattern with equally distributed heavy stresses. which occasionally fall on a linguistically unstressed syllable. accompanied by sudden rises of a fourth. fifth or a sixth. The peaks form a virtual straight line, falling in the Hungarian and ascending in the French quarrel. TENDERNESS is reflected. on the contrary. by a legato phrasing. weak stresses. a high degree of melodicity,7 and an undulating melodic line with smooth transitions. The pertinence of the melodic ductus could be tested by means of a synthesis of French and Hungarian utterances (F6nagy 198lb). The dynamic tendencies which characterize the vocal expression of emo· tions and emotive attitudes transgress the linguistic boundaries. In fact. they go beyond verbal communication: they penneate musical 'language". We meet with quite similar configurations in European vocal and instrumental music (Frinagy and Magdics 1963a). 2.5 Oral gesturing in poelry Paradoxically. sound shape plays a still more prominent role in poetry than in every·day speech even though poems have no phonetic dimension, as stated by Roman Jakobson (1979 (1923) SW 5: 3-121 ). This seems to contradict the high aesthetic value attributed to sounds in poetry by poets and literary critics. from Dionysius Halicamassus (1st century B. C.) to Andre Spire {1986(19491). Non·vcrbal phonetic messages are generated by means of articulatory and acoustic deviations as compared to neutral speech. A quite similar effect can be obtained by means of statistical deviances in the frequency distribution of the phonemes in verse-lines. stanzas or cycles of poems. In live speech the hearer's expectation is frustrated by a pronunciation contrasting with the non·marked phonotype. In the case of poetic texts the frequency of vowels or consonants differs significantly from nonnal distribution. The specific (divergent) distribu· tion·profile is perceived by the reader as a significant and meaningful distortion. and it is evaluated in the same way as are the expressive distortions of pronunci- ation. Expressive nasalization can be mimicked at the phonological level by
- 49. 12 IVAN FONAGY increasing the number of nasal vowels and consonants lending lhe lines the connotation of languorous desire: Des t'lllacemrnts vai11s et des desirs §Clns nmnbre. Mnn ombre se fondra ajamais en ton ombre. (Verlaine "Lettre") 1be fronting of articulation. imitated by a high number of front vowels. illumi- nates Dante's line (''Paradiso" XXX v.47): Gli spiriti visivi che si priva... Tense articulation of angry speech is imitated by an unusually high number of hard (tense) consonants: t, k, r. Tu fus dur ct sec Comme un roup de trique. Tu fus dur et sec Commc une bourriq11e. (Vcrlainc. ''A Monsieur le Dr.Gnmdm•n") There are essentially two ways to test the traditional tenet of isomorphism of expression and content, according to the pllysei principle (Plato, Cratyllu 383a: 42fic.-<:). PHONETIC LEVEL na.Q.Iizing vowels fronling vowels lense articulation -+ -+ -+ PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL more na."al vowels more front vowels more tense vowels Dionysius Halicama.<iseus (1st century B.C.) uncovered lhe secret some lwo thousand years ago: the poet may oblain the suitable effects by "selecting and grouping the words appropriately" ( 184S: 274).11 There are essentially two ways to test the traditional lencl of isomorphism of expression and content. according to the ph)'.fei principle (Plato, Crary/us 383a: 426c-e). The classical procedure consists in comparing the jreq11ency distributicm of phonemes in two cycles of poems, contrasting in meaning. written by the same author. Ba."ically tender and aggressive cycles of Hungarian. as well as Gennan and French poems show the affinity between ·soft' consonants and tender mood. between 'hard' consonants (k,t,r) and aggressive poems.9 Alralysis by synthesis is another way to check poetic sound symbolism.
- 50. WHY !CONICITY'! 13 Instead of setting out from the content and looking for differences in frequency distribution. we could also modify the sound distribution and see how the readers will react to the contrasting sound shapes. We cannot modify. however. the sound-distribution of a poem without changing its meaning distribution and see how the readers will react to the contrasting sound shapes. unless we choose a content-free 'poem'. such as one of the pseudo-Hungarian poems written by the great Hungarian humorist. Frigyes Karinthy. We modified the frequency distribu- tion in different ways: e.g. by substituting voiced instead of unvoiced conso- nants. liquids instead of plosives (softening): or on the contrary. substituting unvoiced for voiced consonants (hardening): constrictives for plosives (spirantiza- tion). etc. (F6nagy 1980a: 79-80). 3. General principles of dual encoding The Distorter of the proposed model operates on all linguistic levels. In the above mentioned previous publication (1971), I attempted to sketch the rough outlines of an extended model of expressive distortions. These outlines are essentially based on the tenets of classical rhetorics.! proposed to distinguish two kinds of expressive distortions: (I) Jynwgmatk rrcmsferJ, i.e. transpositions along the time axis: and (2) paradigmatic transfer.·, i.e. transpositions in semantic space. 3.1 TranJpo.~itimu (.~_wuagmari£' transfers) 3.I .I Shifr.~ ofstre.u Expressive shifts of stress - as observed in French emotive speech at least since the second half of the 19th century - is a good example of syntagmatic transfer. The shift of stress from the last to the first syllable expressed a strong emotion - anger. surprise - or simply emphasis: impvHIBie- -IMpo.uib/e I imPO.ui- ble. or even with two or three stresses in contiguous syllables: IM-PO-SSible. The emphatic or emotive displacement of stress in Jive speech can be mimicked in poetic texts. Rhythmical mismatches - divergence of ictus (metrical accent) and stress (linguistic accent) - may induce the reader either to shift the stress to an unstressed syllable, or to give prominence to both the stressed and the metrically strong syllable. Statistical evidence suggests that metrical conflicts are more frequent in poems reflecting excitement. restlessness and inner struggle (F6nagy 1981a: 139 ff.).
- 51. 14 IVAN f6NAGY 3.1.2 Shifts ofpause 11le frequent separation of words tightly welded together by semantic and syntaclic bounds is frequenl in angry speech, and may be considered as a verbal equivalenl of lhe tearing to pieces of a sheet of paper. Similarly. contradictions between prosodic and linguistic articulation of poetic utterances (FOnagy 1981a: 145ft".) - shifts of the cat.'sura or enjambe- ment - may suggest irregular speech pauses, emphatic breaks. Such divisions are significantly more frequent in Verlaine's aggressive cycle of poems, the cycle lnw!ctil·es lhan in the peaceful Sageue. (In the lllvn:th·es there are 16.8 commas per 100 words. but only 8,5 in Sagesse.) In the lln•ectil•es even words might be cut in to two halves by the end of the verse-line: Autm; que toi que je vais sac- roger de si belle manihe f...) 'NOI you but others whom 1"11 tear a- sunder so nicely" (...( ("Puisque ta photographic'', in: Chuir) 1be semantic range of irregular pauses is much larger in poetic texis. In contra- distinction 10 emphatic speech pauses, run-on lines may be, and generally are, descriptive in suggesting movemenl (passing over, running), Sac:he ich die maegde an dcr stlize den bal ll"erfen.so kacmc uns dcr vogclc schal. 'If I saw the girls in lhe sueel lhrowing the ball. we should hear lhe warbling of birds." (Walter von der Vagclweidc. "'Frtlhlingsschnsucht") or being hampered. ending and beginning. death and rebirth, spatial or temporal layering (over, below. before, after). halves or pairs (F6nagy 1981a). With the help of run-on lines poetic utterances become self-representations: the utterance describes and at the same lime mimes ils proper content. 3.1.3 Clla~rges ofword tlrder Charles Bally presents in his paper of 1941 'dislocation' as a most characteristic syntactic feature of Modem French: a typical way to decompose verbal or nominal syntagms. The subject or object is pulled out of the synlagm and 'propelled'. 'shol forward' inlo initial posilion: l..cs enfanL-.. suflh de lcs comprc:ndre. '111c children. jusl lry to undcn;tand them' (Qucneau. Zu:.ie dan., le Mitro p.l6)
- 52. WHY !CONICITY? IS 1be propelled noun constitutes a global (monolithic) exclamative utterance. according to Bally, which is developed and made explicit in the subsequent proposition (see also F6nagy 1975. Perrot 1978, Lambrecht 1981, Barnes 1985, Touratier 1993).- In fact. we meet analogous constructions in Greek and Latin, in Gennanic, in Finno-Ugric languages. in Biblical Hebrew (casus pendens), and other languages. It is, at the same time, a child language universal. In the speech of the 1.0 year and 1.3 year old. the utterance starts with a still undivided. global utterance. which gradually develops into an articulated utterance.ln the speech of the adull. on the other hand, an articulated sentence falls into pieces through the ejection of an es.o;ential component, the subject or lhe object. A" a consequence, we meet with apparently similar structures in child language and Modem French (F6nagy 1975a). A young woman to her neighbour: U., ce g~on. regarde ce g~on! 'There. this boy. look at this boy!' (Peter 1.8 year old: ) 'otan 'autoo:t 'nezni 'auto:t 'There. car-Ace look-INf car-Ace' In an evolutive perspective. we could see in this kind of 'left-shift', dislocation or extraposition. a syntactic regression to an early level of ontogenesis. From a functional synchronic point of view, this type of 'syntactic regression' is an ideal means of topicalization. more generally. of information structuring (Haegeman 1991: 591f.. Geluykens 1992. Perrot 1978. Lambrecht 1981). Expressive word order;, poetry This time again. poetic language makes a more extensive use of stylized analogues of sequential disorder. The shooting forward of a sentence kernel reflects genuine excitement in one of Heine's la.<d poems: ...fUr dich. flirdich. Es hat mcin Hert. fUr dich geschlagen! ....ror you. ror you. My hean was beating ror you!" (Ut:Je Gedichte) Isolation of qualifiers (adjectives, adverbs) by means of left shift allows the poet to represent the gradual elaboration of an idea. elicited by an external stimulus.
- 53. 16 IVAN F6NAGY Clear and loud The village clock tolled six. (Wordsworth. 'Influence of natural objects'') Dark. Jeep. and cold. the cum::nt Hows Onto the !;Ca where no wind blows.(... ) (Eliot. ''Plaint") The embedding of a second proposition into the first one. lryperbatmr. is considered a figure of sentence in classical rhetorics, i.e. a transformation producing aesthetic value. Double embedding may serve. as has been showen by Leo Spitzer (Drei·Kulissen System. 1928) to depict the horizontaJ layers of a landscape: Le chciteau, tout blam:. le solei! couchC. ason Hanc, (Verlainc, "L'aiiCe sans fin") 'The castle. lhe sun going down. fully white, at its side. with.' In the following. the sequence of words mimicks the character's way of walking in the second pan of Virgil's Aeneid (vv.l56-158): the interruption and restart of the utterance seems to reHcct the hero's hesitations. who crosses again the threshold of his house. returning to Troy destroyed by fire. hoping Creusa might have returned to their home: lode domum. siforte pedem, siforte tulissct... 'Then I returned to our home. in case she set. in case she might set foot in the house ... · Siforte pedem... the verbal syntagm remains uncompleted. pendent. reflecting an interrupted movement. Somebody who intended to cross the threshold. hesitates to take a step. Aeneas sees Creusa in the door. par.1lysed by fear. and then she overcomes her fear and crosses the threshold. In all these cases. we have to use a magnifying lens. to retransform slight verbal irregularities into bodily movements or spatial organization. Poetic distortions of grammatical word order have nothing in common (at least in a first approach) with 'movements' described in the framework of Generative Grammar. Such virtual movements serve to link S(urface)-structure with the underlying D(eep)-structure. They are necessary in generating grammati- cal sentences. Consequently. they are. by definition. unable to convey the
- 54. WHY !CONICITY? 17 secondary mes.'iage due to the distortion of grammatical rules of movement which serve to account for grammatical word order. Since grammalical (unmarked) word order is inherenlly molivated (Haiman 1983. 1985: 102-147, 238 If.). expres.<iive or figurative modifications create an iconicity of the second degree. 3.2 Mow!menu ;, semamic spaL-e: Paradigmalir: trallsfers Free movement in semantic space is a vital condition for all meaningful elements of nalurallanguage: lexemes, grammatical morphemes. word-categories. syntaclic structures, punctuation mark..'i. and even recurrent bound sentences. 3.2.1 Melodk metapl10r.f (a) Transfer of emolive pallems allow aclors to belie their words. making a counterpoint to the tex.t. (b) A typical case of syntactic melodic transfer consists in assigning the pattern of enumeration to statement'li lhat actually do not contain enumeration: such transfers generally reflecl a bored allitude and/or imply underlying non-verbal- ized slatemenl'i such a.~. "and so it goes all the day long". (c) ModaiiTOIU/ers play a basic role in the expressive use of melodic patterns. 11le most typical metaphor consi!o1s in lending an assertive melodic pattern to Yes/No questions. It expresses that the speaker knows in fact the answer. and lhe question is merely formal (a rhetorical question). A modal transfer going in the opposite direction could be observed in the speech of Hungarian youth in the fifties. I encounlered the transfer of the illlerrogalil·e pattern to imperalive sentences in the speech of my nine year old son in the sentence Api, ~jigyelj ~; 'de! 'Daddy. lislen!' The illegal presence of the interrogative pattern generally corresponded to some unsolved question or problem. Api, gyere ide! "Daddy, please come!' showing a picture he came across in a book. representing a long haired young man in armour: ''Is it a girl or a boy?". The semantic structure of modal intonation metaphor does not differ from that of lexical transfers. and could be represented as in Figure I (where ? and ! stand for interrogative and imperalive modalily).
- 55. Other documents randomly have different content
- 56. Davie, Oliver. Methods in the Art of Taxidermy. 1894, Oliver Davie & Co., Columbus, O. $10 net. Gage, S. H. Life History of the Toad. Teacher's Leaflets No. 9, April, 1898, prepared by College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. Heilprin, A. The Distribution of Animals. 1886, D. Appleton & Co. $2.00. Hodge, C. F. The Common Toad. Nature Study Leaflet, Biology Series No. 1. 1898, published by C. H. Hodge, Worcester, Mass. Holland, W. J. The Butterfly Book. 1899, Doubleday and McClure Co. $3.00. Hornaday, W. T. Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting. 1897, Chas. Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net. Howell, W. H. Dissection of the Dog. 1889, Henry Holt & Co. $1.00. Huxley, T. H. The Crayfish: an introduction to the Study of Zoology. D. Appleton & Co. $1.75. Jordan, D. S. Manual of Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States, 8th ed. 1899. A. C. McClurg & Co. $2.50. ---- and Evermann, B. W. Fishes of North and Middle America, 4 vols. 1898-1900, Distributed by U. S. National Museum. ---- and Kellogg, V. L. Animal Life. 1900, D. Appleton & Co. $1.20. Lubbock, John. Ants, Bees, and Wasps. 1882. D. Appleton & Co. $2.00. Marshall, H. M., and Hurst, C. H. Practical Biology, 5th ed. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50.
- 57. Martin, H. W., and Moale, W. A. Handbook of Vertebrate Dissection, 3 parts. 1881, Macmillan Co. Part 1. How to dissect a Chelonian (red-bellied slider terrapin); Part 2. How to dissect a bird (pigeon); Part 3. How to dissect a rodent (rat). McCook, Henry. American Spiders and their Spinning Work, 3 vols. 1889-1893, H. C. McCook, Phila., Pa. $30.00. Miall, L. C. The Natural History of Aquatic Insects. 1895, Macmillan Co. $1.75. Parker, T. J. A Course of Instruction in Zootomy. 1884, Macmillan Co. $2.25. ---- Lessons in Elementary Biology. 1897, Macmillan Co. $2.65. ---- and Haswell, W. A. Textbook of Zoology, 2 vols. 1897, Macmillan Co. $9.00. Peckham, George W. and E. J. On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps. 1898, sold by Des Forges & Co., Milwaukee, Wis. $2.00. Potts, E. Fresh-water Sponges. 1887, Phil. Acad. of Sciences. Poulton, E. B. The Colors of Animals. 1890, D. Appleton & Co. $1.75. Reighard, J. E., and Jennings, H. S. The Anatomy of the Cat. 1901, Henry Holt & Co. $4.00. Ridgway, R. Directions for Collecting Birds. Distributed by U. S. National Museum. Riverside Natural History, 6 vols. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $30.00.
- 58. Romanes, Geo. Darwin and After Darwin, I. 1895-97, Open Court Publishing Co. Scudder, S. H. The Life of a Butterfly. 1893, Henry Holt & Co. $1.00. Van Beneden, E. Animal Parasites and Messmates. 1876, D. Appleton & Co. $1.50. Wallace, A. R. The Geographical Distribution of Animals. 1876, Harper & Bros. $10.00. Wallace, A. R. Island Life. 1881, Harper & Bros. $4.00.
- 59. APPENDIX III REARING ANIMALS AND MAKING COLLECTIONS Much good work in observing the behavior and life-history of some kinds of animals can be done by keeping them alive in the schoolroom under conditions simulating those to which they are exposed in nature. The growth and development of frogs and toads from egg to adult, as well as their feeding habits and general behavior, can all be observed in the schoolroom as explained in Chapter XII. Harmless snakes are easily kept in glass-covered boxes; snails and slugs are contented dwellers indoors; certain fish live well in small aquaria, and many other familiar forms can be kept alive under observation for a longer or shorter time. But from the ease with which they are obtained and cared for, the inexpensiveness of their live-cages, and the interesting character of their life-history and general habits, insects are, of all animals, the ones which specially commend themselves for the schoolroom menagerie. In the technical notes in the chapter (XXI) devoted to insects are numerous suggestions regarding the obtaining and care of certain kinds of insects which may be reared and studied to advantage in the schoolroom. In the following paragraphs are given directions for making the necessary live-cages and aquaria for these insects. Live-cages and aquaria.—Prof. J. H. Comstock has so well described the making of simple and inexpensive cages and aquaria in his book, "Insect Life," that, with his permission, his account is quoted here. Live-cages.—"A good home-made cage can be built by fitting a pane of glass into one side of an empty soap-box. A board, three or four inches wide, should be fastened below the glass so as to admit of a
- 60. layer of soil being placed in the lower part of the cage, and the glass can be made to slide, so as to serve as a door (fig. 166). The glass should fit closely when shut, to prevent the escape of the insects.
- 61. Fig. 166.—Soap-box breeding-cage for insects. (From Jenkins and Kellogg.) "In rearing caterpillars and other leaf-eating larvæ, branches of the food-plant should be stuck into bottles or cans which are filled with sand saturated with water. By keeping the sand wet the plants can be kept fresh longer than in water alone, and the danger of the larvæ being drowned is avoided by the use of sand. "Many larvæ when full-grown enter the ground to pass the pupal state; on this account a layer of loose soil should be kept in the bottom of a breeding-cage. This soil should not be allowed to become dry, neither should it be soaked with water. If the soil is too dry the pupæ will not mature, or if they do so the wings will not expand fully; if the soil is too damp the pupæ are liable to be drowned or to be killed by mold. "It is often necessary to keep pupæ over winter, for a large proportion of insects pass the winter in the pupal state. Hibernating pupæ may be left in the breeding-cages or removed and packed in moss in small boxes. Great care should be taken to keep moist the soil in the breeding-cages, or the moss if that be used. The cages or boxes containing the pupæ should be stored in a cool cellar, or in an unheated room, or in a large box placed out of doors where the sun cannot strike it. Low temperature is not so much to be feared as great and frequent changes of temperature. "Hibernating pupæ can be kept in a warm room if care be taken to keep them moist, but under such treatment the mature insects are apt to emerge in midwinter. "An excellent breeding-cage is represented by fig. 167. It is made by combining a flower-pot and a lantern-globe. When practicable, the food-plant of the insects to be bred is planted in the flower-pot; in
- 62. Fig. 167.—Lamp-chimney and flower-pot breeding-cage for insects. (From Jenkins and Kellogg.) other cases a bottle or tin can filled with wet sand is sunk into the soil in the flower-pot, and the stems of the plant are stuck into this wet sand. The top of the lantern-globe is covered with Swiss muslin. These breeding-cages are inexpensive, and especially so when the pots and globes are bought in considerable quantities. A modification of this style of breeding-cage that is used by the writer differs only in that large glass cylinders take the place of the lantern-globes. These cylinders were made especially for us by a manufacturer of glass, and cost from six to eight dollars per dozen, according to size, when made in lots of fifty. "When the transformation of small insects or of a small number of larger ones are to be studied, a convenient cage can be made by combining a large lamp-chimney with a small flower-pot. "The root-cage.—For the study of insects that infest the roots of plants, the writer has devised a special form of breeding-cage known as the root-cage. In its simplest form this cage consists of a frame holding two plates of glass in a vertical position and only a short distance apart. The space between the plates of glass is filled with soil in which seeds are planted or small plants set. The width of the space between the plates of glass depends on the width of two strips of wood placed between them, one at each end, and should be only wide enough to allow the insects under observation to move freely through the soil. If it is too wide the insects will be able to conceal themselves. Immediately outside of each glass there is a piece of blackened zinc which slips into grooves in the ends of the cage, and which can be easily removed when it is desired to observe the insects in the soil.
- 63. "Aquaria.—For the breeding of aquatic insects aquaria are needed. As the ordinary rectangular aquaria are expensive and are liable to leak we use glass vessels instead. "Small aquaria can be made of jelly-tumblers, glass finger-bowls, and glass fruit-cans, and larger aquaria can be obtained of dealers. A good substitute for these is what is known as a battery-jar (fig. 168). There are several sizes of these, which can be obtained of most dealers in scientific apparatus. "To prepare an aquarium, place in the jar a layer of sand; plant some water-plants in this sand, cover the sand with a layer of gravel or small stones, and then add the required amount of water carefully, so as not to disturb the plants or to roil the water unduly. The growing plants will keep the water in good condition for aquatic animal life, and render changing of the water unnecessary, if the animals in it live naturally in quiet water. Among the more available plants for use in aquaria are the following: "Waterweed, Elodea canadensis. "Bladderwort, Utricularia (several species). "Water-starwort, Callitriche (several species). "Watercress, Nasturtium officinale. "Stoneworts, Chara and Nitella (several species of each). "Frog-spittle or water-silk, Spirogyra. "A small quantity of duckweed, Lemna, placed on the surface of the water adds to the beauty of an aquarium. "When it is necessary to add water to an aquarium on account of loss by evaporation, rain water should be used to prevent an undue accumulation of the mineral-water held in solution in other water."
- 64. Fig. 168.—Battery-jar aquarium. (From Jenkins and Kellogg.) Making collections.—Much is to be learned about animals by "collecting" them. But the collecting should be done chiefly with the idea of learning about the animals rather than with the notion of getting as many specimens as possible. To collect, it is necessary to find the animals alive; one learns thus their haunts, their local distribution, and something of their habits, while by continued work one comes to know how many and what different kinds or species of each group being collected occur in the region collected over. Collecting requires the sacrifice of life, however, and this will always
- 65. be kept well in mind by the humane teacher and pupil. Where one set of specimens will do, no more should be collected. The author believes that high-school work in this line should be almost exclusively limited to the building up of a common school collection. Let a single set of specimens be brought together by the combined efforts of all the members of the class, and let it be well housed and cared for permanently. Each succeeding class will add to it; it may come in time to be a really representative exhibition of the local fauna. The high-school collection should include not only adult specimens of the various kinds of animals, forming a systematic collection, as it is called, but also all kinds of specimens which illustrate the structure and habits of the animals in question and which will constitute a so- called biological collection. Specimens of the eggs and all immature stages; dissections preserved in alcohol or formalin showing the external and internal anatomy; nests, cocoons, and all specimens showing the work and industries of the various animals; in short, any specimen of the animal itself in embryonic or postembryonic condition, or any parts of the animal, or anything illustrating what the animal does or how it lives, all these should be collected as assiduously as the adult individuals. Each specimen in the collection should be labelled with the name of the animal, the date, and locality, and the name of the collector, with any particular information which will make it more instructive. If such special data are too voluminous for a label, they should be written in a general note-book called "Notes on Collections" (kept in the schoolroom with the collection), the specimen and corresponding data being given a common number so that their association may be recognized. In the following paragraphs are given brief directions for catching, pinning up, and caring for insects, for making skins of birds and mammals, and for the alcoholic preservation of other kinds of animals. Insects.—For catching insects there are needed a net, a killing-bottle, a few small vials of alcohol, and a few small boxes to carry home live specimens, cocoons, galls, etc. For preparing and preserving the
- 66. Fig. 169.—Insect killing-bottle; cyanide of potassium at bottom, covered with plaster of Paris. (From Jenkins and Kellogg.) insects there are needed insect- pins, cork- or pith-lined drawers or boxes, and small wide-mouthed bottles of alcohol. The net, about 2 feet deep, tapering and rounded at its lower end, is made of cheesecloth or bobinet (not mosquito-netting, which is too frail), attached to a ring, one foot in diameter, of No. 3 galvanized iron wire, which in turn is fitted into a light wooden or cane handle about three and a half feet long. The killing-bottle (fig. 169) is prepared by putting a few small lumps (about a teaspoonful) of cyanide of potassium into the bottom of a wide-mouthed bottle holding about four ounces, and covering this cyanide with wet plaster of Paris. When the plaster sets it will hold the cyanide in place, and allow the fumes given off by its gradual volatilization to fill the bottle. Insects dropped into it will be killed in from two or three to ten minutes. Keep a little tissue paper in the bottle to soak up moisture and to prevent the specimens from rubbing. Also keep the bottle well corked. Label it "Poison," and do not breathe the fumes (hydrocyanic gas). Insects may be left in it over night without injury to them. Butterflies or dragon-flies too large to drop into the killing-bottle may be killed by dropping a little chloroform or benzine on a piece of cotton, to be placed in a tight box with them. Larvæ (caterpillars, grubs, etc.) and pupæ (chrysalids) should be dropped into the vials of alcohol. In collecting, visit flowers, sweep the net back and forth over the small flowers and grasses of meadows and pastures, look under stones, break up old logs and stumps, poke about decaying matter, jar and shake small trees and shrubs, and visit ponds and streams.
- 67. Many insects can be collected in summer at night about electric lights, or a lamp by an open window. When the insects are brought home or to the schoolroom they must be "pinned up." Buy insect-pins, long, slender, small-headed, sharp- pointed pins, of a dealer in naturalists' supplies (see p. 453). These pins cost ten cents a hundred. Order Klaeger pins, No. 3, or Carlsbaeder pins, No. 5. These are the most useful sizes. For larger pins order Klaeger No. 5 (Carlsbaeder No. 8); for smaller order Klaeger No. 1 (Carlsbaeder No. 2). Pin each insect straight down through the thorax (fig. 170) (except beetles, which pin through the right wing-cover near the middle of the body). On each pin below the insect place a small label with date and locality of capture. Insects too small to be pinned may be gummed on to small slips of cardboard, which should be then pinned up. Keep the insects in drawers or boxes lined on the bottom with a thin layer of cork, or pith of some kind. (Corn-pith can be used; also in the West, the pith of the flowering stalk of the century plant.) The cheapest insect-boxes and very good ones, too, are cigar-boxes. But unless well looked after they let in tiny live insects which feed on the dead specimens. For a permanent collection, therefore, it will be necessary to have made some tight boxes or drawers. Glass-topped ones are best, so that the specimens may be examined without opening them. A "moth-ball" (naphthaline) fastened in one corner of the box will help keep out the marauding insects.
- 68. Fig. 170.—Insect properly "pinned up." (From Jenkins and Kellogg.) Butterflies, dragon-flies, and other larger and beautiful-winged insects should be "spread," that is, should be allowed to dry with wings expanded. To do this spreading- or setting-boards (figs. 171 and 172) are necessary. Such a board consists of two strips of wood fastened a short distance apart so as to leave between them a groove for the body of the insect, and upon which the wings are held in position until the insect is dry. A narrow strip of pith or cork should be fastened to the lower side of the two strips of wood, closing the groove below. Into this cork is thrust the pin on which the insect is mounted. Another strip of wood is fastened to the lower sides of the cleats to which the two strips are nailed. This serves as a bottom and protects the points of the pins which project through the piece of cork. The wings are held down, after having been outspread with the hinder margins of the fore wings about at right angles to the body, by strips of paper pinned down over them. "Soft specimens" such as insect larvæ, myriapods, and spiders should be preserved in bottles of alcohol (85 per cent). Nests, galls, stems,
- 69. Fig. 171.—Setting-board with butterflies properly "spread." (After Comstock.) and leaves partly eaten by insects, and other dry specimens can be kept in small pasteboard boxes. For a good and full account of insect-collecting and preserving, with directions for making insect- cases, etc., see Comstock's "Insect Life," pp. 284-314. Birds.—In collecting birds, shooting is chiefly to be relied on. Use dust-shot (the smallest shot made) in small loads. For shooting small birds it is extremely desirable to have an auxiliary barrel of much smaller bore than the usual shotgun which can be fitted into one of the regular gun-barrels. In such an auxiliary barrel use 32- calibre shells loaded with dust-shot instead of bullets. Plug up the throat and vent of shot birds with cotton, and thrust each bird head downward into a cornucopia of paper. This will keep the feathers unsoiled and smooth. Birds should be skinned soon after bringing home, after they have become relaxed, but before evidences of decomposition are manifest. The tools and materials necessary to make skins are scalpel, strong sharp-pointed scissors, bone-cutters, forceps, corn-meal, a mixture of two parts white arsenic and one part powdered alum, cotton, and metric-system measure. Before skinning, the bird should be measured. With a metric-system measure carefully take the alar extent, i.e. spread from tip to tip of outstretched wings; length of
- 70. wing, i.e. length from wrist-joint to tip; length of bill in straight line from base (on dorsal aspect) to tip; length of tarsus, and length of middle toe and claw. To skin the bird, cut from anus to point of breast-bone through the skin only. Work skin away on each side to legs; push each leg up, cut off at knee-joint, skin down to next joint, remove all flesh from bone, and pull leg back into place; loosen skin at base of tail, cut through vertebral column at last joint, being careful not to cut through bases of tail-feathers; work skin forward, turning it inside out, loosening it carefully all around, without stretching, to wings; cut off wings at elbow-joint, skin down to next joint and remove flesh from wing- bones; push skin forward to base of skull, and if skull is not too large (it is in ducks, woodpeckers, and some other birds), on over it to ears and eyes; be very careful in loosening the membrane of ears and in cutting nictitating membrane of eyes; do not cut into eyeball; remove eyeballs without breaking; cut off base of skull, and scoop out brain; remove flesh from skull, and "poison" the skin by dusting it thoroughly with the powdered arsenic and alum mixture. Turn skin right side out, and clean off fresh blood-stains by soaking them up with corn-meal; wash off dried blood with water, and dry with corn- meal. Corn-meal may be used during skinning to soak up blood and grease.
- 71. Fig. 172.—Setting-board in cross-section to show construction. (After Comstock.) There remains to stuff the skin. Fill orbits of eyes with cotton (this can be advantageously done before skin is reversed); thrust into neck a moderately compact, elastic, smooth roll of cotton about thickness of the natural neck; make a loose oval ball of size and general shape of bird's body and put into body-cavity with anterior end under the posterior end of neck-roll; pull two edges of abdominal incision together over the cotton, fasten, if necessary, with a single stitch of thread, smooth feathers, fold wings in natural position, wrap skin, not tightly, in thin sheet of cotton (opportunity for delicate handling here) and put away in a drawer or box to dry. Before putting away tie label to leg, giving date and locality of capture, sex and measurements of bird, and name of collector. Before bird is put into permanent collection it should be labelled with its common and scientific name. The mounting of birds in lifelike shape and attitude is hard to do successfully; and a collection of mounted birds demands much more room and more expensive cabinets than one of skins. For instructions for the mounting of birds see Davie's "Methods in the Art of Taxidermy," pp. 39-57; or Hornaday's "Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting." For a more detailed account of making bird-skins, see also these books, or Ridgway's "Directions for Collecting Birds." In collecting birds' nests cut off the branch or branches on which the nest is placed a few inches above and below the nest, leaving it in its natural position. Ground-nests should have the section of the sod on which they are placed taken up and preserved with them. If the inner lining of the nest consists of feathers or fur put in a "moth-ball" (naphthaline). To preserve birds' eggs they should be emptied through a single small hole on one side by blowing. Prick a hole with a needle and enlarge with an egg-drill (obtain of dealers in naturalists' supplies, see p. 453.) Blow with a simple bent blowpipe with point smaller than the hole. After removing contents clean by blowing in a little water, and blowing it out again. After cleaning, place the egg, hole downward, on a layer of corn-meal to dry. Label each egg by writing on it near
- 72. the hole a number. Use a soft pencil for writing. This number should refer to a record (book) under similar number, or to an "egg-blank," containing the following data: name of bird, number of eggs in set, date and locality, name of collector, and any special information about the eggs or nest which the collector may think advisable. The eggs may be kept in drawers or boxes lined with cotton, and divided into little compartments. For detailed directions for collecting and preserving birds' eggs and nests, see Bendire's "Directions for Collecting, Preparing, and Preserving Birds' Eggs and Nests" or Davie's "Methods in the Art of Taxidermy," pp. 74-78. [21] Mammals.—Any mammal intended for a scientific specimen should be measured in the flesh, before skinning, and as soon after death as practicable, when the muscles are still flexible. (This is particularly true of larger species, such as foxes, wildcats, etc.) The measurements are taken in millimetres, a rule or steel tape being used. (1) Total length: stretch the animal on its back along the rule or tape and measure from the tip of the nose (head extended as far as possible) to the tip of the fleshy part of tail (not to end of hairs). (2) Tail: bend tail at right angles from body backward and place end of ruler in the angle, holding the tail taut against the ruler. Measure only to tip of flesh (make this measurement with a pair of dividers). (3) Hind foot: place sole of foot flat on ruler and measure from heel to tip of longest toe-nail (in certain small mammals it is necessary to use dividers for accuracy). The measurements should be entered on the label, along with such necessary data as sex, locality, date, and collector's name. Skin a mammal as soon after death as possible. Lay mammal on back and with scissors or scalpel open the skin along belly from about midway between fore and hind legs to vent, taking care not to cut muscles of abdomen. Skin down on either side of the body by working the skin from flesh with fingers till hind legs appear. Use corn-meal to stanch blood or moisture. With left hand grasp a leg and work the knee from without into the opening just made; cut the bone at the knee, skin leg to heel and clean meat off the bone (leaving it attached of course to foot). In animals larger than squirrels skin down
- 73. to tips of toes. Do the same with other leg. Skin around base of tail till the skin is free all around so that a grip can be secured on body; then with thumb and forefinger hold the skin tight at base of tail and slowly pull out the tail. In small mammals this can be done readily, but in foxes it is often necessary to split the skin up along the under side and dissect it off the tail-bones. After the tail is free skin down the body, using the fingers (except in large mammals) till the fore legs are reached; treat the fore legs in the same manner as hind legs, thrusting elbow out of the skin much as a person would do in taking off a coat; cut bone at elbow; clean fore-arm bone. Skin over neck to base of ears. With scalpel cut through ears close to skull. With scalpel dissect off skin over the head (taking care not to injure eyelids) down to tip of nose, severing its cartilage and hence freeing skin from body. Sew mouth by passing needle through under lip and then across through two sides of the upper lip; draw taut and tie thread. Poison skin thoroughly. Turn skin right side out. Next sever the skull carefully from body, just where the last neck-vertebra joins the back of the skull. It is necessary to keep the skull, because characters of bone and teeth are much used in classification. Remove superfluous meat from the skull and take out brain with a little spoon made of a piece of wire with loop at end. Tag the skull with a number corresponding to that on skin, and hang up to dry. A finished specimen skull is made by boiling it a short time and picking the meat off with forceps, further cleaning it with an old tooth-brush, when it is placed in the sun to bleach. Care must be taken always not to injure bones or dislodge teeth. Mammals are stuffed with cotton or tow; the latter is used in species from a gray squirrel up. Large mammals stuffed with cotton do not dry readily, and often spoil. Being much thicker-skinned than birds, mammals require more care in drying and ordinarily require a much longer period. Soft hay may be substituted for tow; never use feathers or hair. Roll a longish wad of cotton about the size of body and insert with forceps, taking care to form the head nearly as in life. Split the back end of the cotton and stuff each hind leg with the two branches thus formed. Roll a piece of cotton around end of forceps
- 74. and stuff fore legs. Place a stout straight piece of wire in the tail, wrapping it slightly to give the tail the plump appearance of life. (If the cotton cannot be reeled on to the wire evenly, leave it off entirely.) Make the wire long enough to extend half way up belly. Sew up slit in belly. Lay mammal on belly and pin out on a board by legs, with the fore legs close beside head, and hind legs parallel behind, soles downward. Be sure the label is tied securely on right hind leg. For directions for preparing and mounting skeletons of birds, mammals, and other vertebrates, see the books of Davie and Hornaday already referred to. Fishes, batrachians, reptiles, and other animals.—The most convenient and usual way of preserving the other vertebrates (not birds or mammals) is to put the whole body into 85 per cent alcohol or 4 per cent formalin. Batrachians should be kept in alcohol not exceeding 60 per cent strength. Several incisions should always be made in the body, at least one of which should penetrate the abdominal cavity. Anatomical preparations are similarly preserved. By keeping the specimens in glass jars they may be examined without removal. Fishes should not be kept in formalin more than a few months, as they absorb water, swell, and grow fragile. Of the invertebrates all, except the insects, are preserved in alcohol or formalin. The shells of molluscs can be preserved dry, of course, in drawers or boxes divided into small compartments.
- 75. INDEX ☞Illustrations are indicated by an asterisk Acanthia lectularia, *188. Acarina, 230. Acmara spectorum, *248. Actinozoa, 97, 102. Adaptation, 407. Adder, spreading, 321. Ægialitis vocifera, 349. Agalenidæ, 235. Agkistrodon piscivorous, 323. Aix sponsa, 347. Albatross, 346. Alca impennis, 345. Alce americana, *385, 396. Alligator, 326. Alligator mississippensis, 326.
- 76. Alternation of generations, 96. Amblophtes rupestris, 282. Amblystoma, 297, 298. Amblystoma maculatum, 299. Ameiurus, 282. Amœba, *32; structure and life of, 31. Amphioxus, 278. Anaconda, 324. Anas boschas, 347. Anatomy defined, 3. Anguilla, 284. Anguillula, 140. Anolis principalis, 319. Anosia plexippus, anatomy of larva of, 177; external structure of, 171, *172; life of, 175; mimicked by Basilarchia archippus, *433. Anseres, 347. Ant, little black, *224;
- 77. little brown, 223. Antelope, *395, 396. Antenna of carrion beetle, *184. Antilocapra americana, *395, 396. Antrostomus vociferus, 356. Ant, 212, 218, 223. Anura, 299. Ape, 401. Aphidiæ, 200. Apis florea, comb of, *222. Apis mellifica, *218. Appearance, terrifying, 430. Aquarium, 457. Aquarium, battery-jar, *461. Aquila chrysætos, 342. Arachnida, 144, 229. Arctomys monax, 391. Ardea herodias, 358.
- 78. Ardea virescens, 347. Argiope sp., *236. Argonaut, 257. Argonauta argo, 257. Ariolimax californica, *252. Arthogastra, 230. Arthropoda, 144. Ascidian, 259, *261. Aspidiotus aurantii, *198. Asterias sp., structure and life of, 108. Asterias, *109; cross-section of, *112. Asterias ocracia, *122. Asterina mineata, *122. Asteroidea, 120, 121. Attidæ, 235. Auk, great, 345. Aves, 327. Aythya vallisneria, 347.
- 79. Ayu, 283. Back-swimmer, 197, 199. Balanus, *153. Balæna glacialis, 393. Balæna mysticetus, 393. Barbadoes earth, 82. Barnacle, *153, 155; sessile, 155; stalked, 155. Barn-owl, 353. Bartramia longicauda, 349. Bascanium constrictor, 321. Bass, 282. Bat, hoary, *392. Batrachia, 291. Batrachians, 291; body form and structure of, 292; classification of, 295; life-history and habits of, 295; structure of, 292.
- 80. Bat, 391. Bead-snake, 322. Bear, 398. Beaver, 391. Bed-bug, *188. Bee, 212; solitary, 216. Beetle, great water-scavenger, 163; external structure, *164; internal structure, *167; antenna of carrion, *184; Colorado potato, 209. Beetle, 206; carrion, 209; whirligig, 206. Bell-animalcule, structure and life of, 75. Bills of birds, 362. Bipinnaria, 119. Bird, frigate, 346; man-of-war, 346; outline of body showing external regions, *330; ruby-throat humming, nest and eggs of, *357. Bird-louse, *194.
- 81. Birds, 327; bills and feet of, 362; body form and structure of, 336; care of young, 366; classification of, 340; collecting, 466; determining, 359; development and life-history of, 339; feeding habits of, 370; flight and songs of, 364; migration of, 367; molting of, 361; nesting of, 366; protection of, 370. Bird-skins, making, 466. Bison bison, 396, *397. Bittern, 348. Blacksnake, 321. Blissus leucopterus, 198. Blood, circulation of, in mammal, *376. Blood of toad, structure of, 40. Blow-fly, 201, 202; section through compound eye of, *185. "Bob Jordan" (monkey), *400. Bobwhite, 350.
- 82. Bombus, 216. Bombyx mori, anatomy of larva of, *178. Bonasa umbellus, 350. Books, reference, 454. Borer, peach-tree, *210. Botaurus lentiginosus, 348. Box tortoise, 315. Brachynotus nudus, *153. Brains of vertebrates, *378. Branch, defined, 73. Branta canadensis, 347. Breeding cage, 458, 459. Brittle-stars, 120, 121, 122. Bubo virginianus, 353. Buffalo, 396, *397. Bufo lentiginosus, 301; dissection of, 5. Bullfrog, 299. Bumblebee, 216.
- 83. Bunodes californica, 103. Buteo, 353. Butterfly, external structure of, 171, *172; life of, 175; monarch, anatomy of larva of, 177; dead leaf, *429; mimicked by viceroy, *433. Butterflies, 205; setting-board for, *466, 467. Buzzard, turkey, 352. Cachalot, 393. Cage, lamp-chimney and flower-pot breeding, *459; soap-box breeding, *458. Cake-urchin, 124. Calcarea, 91. Calliphora vomitoria, 202; section through compound eye of, *185. Callorhinus alascanus, *399. Callorhinus ursinus, parasitized, *422. Cambarus sp., dissection of, 18; life of, 146.
- 84. Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! ebookbell.com