Lexical creation by signing apes

[Ronald Kephart]

Barbara LeMaster wrote:

>Homophony in signing would be iconization - recreating something
>that's visual.

Help, please; sign language is not my field. I'm not sure I
understand the use of "iconization" here. I understand that the "new"
sign looks like the old sign, but the relationship between the new
sign and its referent (the lettuce) is not iconic, right? It looks to
me like a case of *de*-iconization, if we take the original sign (for
eyebrows) to be iconic (altho I also wonder if it wasn't more like an
index than an icon).

Ronald Kephart
Program in Foreign Languages
University of North Florida