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Iconic and Economic Motivation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

John Haiman
John Haiman*
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba
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Abstract

The distance between linguistic expressions may be an iconically motivated index of the conceptual distance between the terms or events which they denote. But the length of an utterance may also correspond to the extent to which it conveys new or unfamiliar information. Reduced form may thus be an economically motivated index of familiarity. Much of the arbitrariness of grammatical structure arises where equally plausible motivations such as iconicity and economy are, in effect, competing for expression on the same linguistic dimension.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 781 - 819
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by Linguistic Society of America

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