Mapeamentos icônicos na estrutura interna dos verbos em língua brasileira de sinais

Abstract

This paper investigates iconic mappings within the internal structure of verbs in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). We understand iconicity as an analogic relation between form and meaning, in which there is resemblance or similarity (MEIR; TKACHMAN, 2018). Other than iconicity, we also investigate the morphophonological structure of the verbs in Libras. Assuming the proposals by Lourenço (2018a, 2018b) and Lourenço and Wilbur (2018), in which they assume that there are simultaneous pieces of visual information, regarding five different morphophonological structures of the verb, to wit: nonmanual markers, including both superior face and inferior face, and the three primary parameters, that are handshape, movement and location. Building on these two concepts – iconicity and internal morphophonological structure of the verb – we investigate whether is possible to identify iconic mappings in each layer, or slots, of visual information of the verb structure. Our claim is that there are, indeed, iconic mappings in the morphological structure of the verb and that each morphological slot can map iconic relations between form and meaning. Additionally, we propose that is possible to determine the degree of iconicity of a given verb item, considering the number of iconic mappings present in its internal structure. This results in an iconicity scale that takes into consideration the morphophonological structure of the lexical item.