Abstract
Historically, debates over relationships between lexical form and
meaning have been dominated by views of arbitrariness, until more recent
research revealed a different perspective in which non-arbitrary
mappings play an important role in the makeup of a lexicon. It is now
clear that phoneme-sound symbolism contributes to non-arbitrariness
(iconicity) of words, which is present in many forms and degrees in
different languages. Attempts have been made to provide a mechanistic
explanation of the phenomenon, and these theories largely centre around
cross-modal correspondences. The multimodal communicative system, to
which iconicity is integral, has important phylogenetic and ontogenetic
advantages, facilitating language learning, comprehension, and
processing. Despite its numerous advantages, iconicity must compete with
arbitrariness, forcing language systems to balance the competing needs
to link linguistic form with human experience and to ensure an effective
signal. On balance, iconicity should be viewed as a core principle of
language, and not merely a marginal phenomenon.