Semiosis of iconicity in natural language (on the material of ergonyms of Moscow)

The paper discusses the semiosis of the sign of the natural language in accordance with the concept of Ch. Piers on the trinity of the object - sign - interpreter. The existence and functioning of the sign are possible only in the process of the performer's activity - translation, interpretation, etc. The present study of the semiosis of a language sign is carried out on the material of ergonyms of the city of Moscow, which act as signs of the iconic nature in the semiotic space of the urban environment. A feature of the proposed approach is an attempt to systematize ergonyms nominating coffee, restaurants and other public spaces from the position of an iconic sign type. The methodology of the undertaken research is based on the identification of two types of iconicity, namely, imagic and diagrammatic types. To establish the features of the language implementation of the iconic sign of each type, we used the component and syntactic analyses. To identify the interpretive potential of the sign, the analysis of cognitive metaphors was used. As a result of the conducted research, it has been found that complex forms of sign coding are carried out on the basis of diagrammatic iconicity, which activates the process of cognitive metaphorization. The data analysis has shown that the imagic iconicity of onomatopoeic nature has a great potential in the ergonym nomination, since it allows speeding up the communication process. However, due to the limitations of onomatopoeic items in the language, there are few nominations of this kind. The most productive type of iconicity in ergonym nomination is diagrammatic iconicity of the semantic type, which generates cognitive metaphors that activate the performer’s activity. It has been established that the syntactic structure of the sign of diagrammatic iconicity, reflecting the sequence of events, acts as a factor influencing the use of the structure in the nomination of ergonyms.