This chapter will focus on the deep evolutionary history of the cognitive capacities underlying linguistic iconicity. The complex capacity for linguistic iconicity has roots in a more general cross-modal ability present throughout the animal kingdom, cross-modal transfer. Cross-modal transfer is the ability to make basic inferences about sensory properties of an object in multiple modalities based on experience from only one. This situates iconicity as a fundamentally cross-modal phenomenon; part of a broader, uniquely human cross-modal cognitive suite which includes relatively rare phenomena like synesthesia, alongside more ubiquitous phenomena like sensory metaphor and cross-modal correspondences. Evidence suggests the evolutionarily deep capacity for cross-modal transfer was honed into more sophisticated capacities underlying iconicity by an evolutionary ratchet of increased prosociality during human self-domestication. This period provided strong selective pressures for increasingly complex cross-sensory communication, and eventually, the predominantly arbitrary symbolic systems that underpin modern human language. This is a peer-reviewed preprint of the work below.Cuskley, Christine and Kees Sommer (forthcoming). The evolution of linguistic iconicity and the cross-modal cognitive suite. To appear in Olga Fisher, Kimi Akita, and Pamela Perniss (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.
1. Purpose of the ResearchThe research aims at developing a concept of operations (ConOps) that could connect aviation and all existing and future transport modes into an overall efficient transport network. Such ConOps should provide future passengers with a rapid and seamless travel experience.2. Research design, Methodology or ApproachThis paper describes a ConOps based on an ATM (Air Traffic Management) for a holistic traffic management system. For this purpose, the influences of quality management systems and other organizational facilities on the quality of passenger travel were examined. Various management systems like resources, traffic information, energy, fleet emergency calls, security and infrastructure, and applications such as weather information platforms and tracking systems have been integrated.3. Expected research findingsThe ConOps is intended to pave the way to cross-modal traffic management, in which the preferences of the travellers have a high priority. The first results show that the needs of the passengers can only be met in advance, and the traffic resources can only be used economically through close cooperation and coordination of these management systems and applications with regard to possible synergies and interactions.4. Summary of the originality/contributionTo develop these ConOps, general and traffic management systems next to basic principles of quality management were researched in the literature, which could be summarized in a Total Traffic Management System (TTM). The ATM experience served as a model example. The ConOps can be used as a basis to build a previously non-existing TTM that can be used to manage the future of travelling and future transport modes.
MULTIFILE
In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in East African country Uganda, the word for photographs is Ebifananyi. However, ebifananyi does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. Ebifananyi instead means things that look like something else. Ebifananyi are likenesses.My research project explores the historical context of this particular conceptualisation of photographs as well as its consequences for present day visual culture in Uganda. It also discusses my artistic practice as research method, which led to the digitisation of numerous collections of photographs which were previously unavailable to the public. This resulted in eight books and in exhibitions that took place in Uganda and in Europe.The research was conducted in collaboration with both human and non-human actors. These actors included photographs, their owners, Ugandan picture makers as well as visitors to the exhibitions that were organised in Uganda and Western Europe. This methodology led to insights into differences in the production and uses of, and into meanings given to, photographs in both Ugandan and Dutch contexts.Understanding differences between ebifananyi and photographs shapes the communication about photographs between Luganda and English speakers. Reflection on the conceptualisations languages offer for objects and for sensible aspects of the surrounding world will help prevent misunderstandings in communication in general.
