Marta Herget

RTG PhD student, member since 2024

Project “The robustness of iconic functions: A cross-modal and cross-linguistic perspective”

This project investigates linguistic and cognitive mechanisms underlying iconicity, that is, the resemblance-based correspondence between form and meaning in language. Iconicity is a fundamental multimodal property of human communication, reflected in phenomena such as gestures and ideophones, which depict sensory imagery and directly evoke aspects of meaning through their form. By examining how such forms are produced, interpreted, and processed across different languages, my work aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how iconicity functions as a universal yet language-specific feature of grammar.

I address two central research questions. The first concerns the degree to which iconic mappings are language-specific: to what extent do speakers of different languages interpret ideophonic expressions in similar or divergent ways, and how does grammatical structure constrain the integration of such forms? Collecting data in Mozambique which has a multitude of local Bantu languages rich in ideophones, allows to study cross-linguistic influences from prototypical ideophone languages (i.e., Changana, spoken in the southern regions of Mozambique) on non-ideophonic languages such as Mozambican Portuguese (MP) and vice versa. Using elicitation and grammatiacality judgment taks, I aim to investigate how MP influences the syntactic integration of Changana ideophones in multilingual speakers.

The second research question explores whether and how iconicity facilitates lexical processing, focusing on the cognitive advantages that iconic forms might offer in the recognition and comprehension of linguistic meaning. My research adopts an experimental and cross-linguistic approach, combining methods from psycholinguistics and typological comparison. Beyond the empirical findings, this work contributes to theoretical debates on iconicity and the emergence and scope of enriched meaning in language.

Background and research interests:

I pursued both my Linguistic Bachelor and Master at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, focusing on bilingual (a)typical language acquisition and phonology. Although my main focus remained on early language acquisition and bilingualism during my Masters, I developed a keen interest on iconicity and its role in human language. My Master studies equipped me with the necessary knowledge in psycholinguistic methods which now allows me to include various experimental methods in my research. My man research interests are iconicity, multilingualism and cross-linguistic variation.