iconicity (n.)

A suggested defining property of some SEMIOTIC SYSTEMS, but not LANGUAGE, to refer to signals whose physical FORM closely corresponds to characteristics of the situations to which they refer. This is the normal state of affairs in animal communication, for example, where a call expressing fear is used only in a fear-producing context. In language, only a small number of ITEMS could be argued to possess such directly symbolic (iconic) properties, e.g. onomatopoeic expressions such as cuckoo, growl.

In LINGUISTICS, iconicity identifies the extent to which a relationship between SEMANTIC notions is directly represented in a language’s FORMAL expression. For example, the semantic relation of a VERB to its direct OBJECT (I see a cat) is closer than that of a verb to its adverbial (I see a cat every evening), and in so far as a language would reflect this difference in closeness formally (e.g. through MORPHOLOGY or through WORD-ORDER) one could talk of an iconic correspondence. This pair of examples would support the notion, in that the normal word-order is as given, and not *I see every evening a cat). Iconicity is especially notable in morphology, where increased formal MARKEDNESS typically corresponds to increased semantic markedness.