Editing Iconicity (section)

==The evolution of language==
[[Derek Bickerton]] has posited that iconic signs, both verbal and gestural, were crucial in the evolution of human language. [[Animal communication]] systems, Bickerton has argued, are largely composed of [[Indexicality|indexical]] (and, occasionally, iconic) signs, whereas in human language, "most words are symbolic, and&nbsp;... without symbolic words we couldn’t have language". The distinction Bickerton draws between these categories is one of [[Displacement (linguistics)|displacement]], with the indexical signs of animal communication systems having no capacity for displacement, and the symbolic signs of human language requiring it. Iconic signs, however, "may or may not have it depending on how they’re used&nbsp;... iconicity, therefore, is the most probable road that our ancestors took into language".

Using a [[Niche construction|niche-construction]] view of human evolution, Bickerton has hypothesized that human ancestors used iconic signs as recruitment signals in the scavenging of dead [[megafauna]]. This process "would have created new words and deployed old words in new contexts, further weakening the uncoupling of words from situations, from current occurrence—even from fitness", and thus allowing for the creation of symbolic language.<ref name="Bickerton (2009)">{{cite book |last=Bickerton |first=Derek |title=Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans |year=2009 |publisher=Hill & Wang |location=New York, NY |isbn=9780809022816 |pages=52–53, 218–222}}</ref>

In ''[[The Symbolic Species]]'', [[Terrence Deacon]] argues that the emanation of symbolic capacities unique to language was a critical factor in the evolution of the human brain, and that these symbolic capacities are vital to differentiating animal from human forms of communication, processes of learning, and brain anatomy. "The doorway into this virtual world was opened to us alone by the evolution of language, because language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought—symbolic representation."<ref name="Deacon (1997)">{{cite book |last=Deacon |first=Terrence |title=The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain |year=1997 |publisher=Allen Lane the Penguin Press |isbn=978-0-393-03838-5 |chapter=1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/symbolicspeciesc00deac/page/22 22] |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/symbolicspeciesc00deac/page/22 }}</ref>