Does it need to be double and novel? Investigating metaphorical signs in German Sign Language
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Metaphors in spoken languages are generated by using a word from a concrete (source)domain and mapping it onto an abstract (target) domain. Thus, one word can have both a basic and a metaphorical meaning. Studies on metaphors in sign languages show that novel metaphorical signs can also appear without a basic but only a metaphorical meaning. In addition, metaphorical signs seem to be iconic in general as the source domain usually is iconically depicted and then mapped onto the target domain. This iconic mapping is said to be specific to the signed modality. The aim of this paper is to investigate if German Sign Language (DGS) exhibits the same patterns. Can we find both novel metaphorical signs as well as signs with both a basic and a metaphorical meaning?Do metaphorical signs have to be iconic or can we also find non-iconic metaphorical signs? In this study, we investigate and analyze 180 DGS signs from the DGS corpus using corpus-linguistic methods. We find all metaphorical signs of the data set to be iconic in at least one phonological parameter. Further, we also find novel metaphorical signs as well as signs with both a basic and a metaphorical meaning.