Bedouin Sign Language on the one hand, and New Zealand Sign Language on
the other, in the frequency distribution of embodied and handling handshapes
for the depiction of (hand-held) instruments.
An alternative explanation for the lack of comparative studies on depictive
iconicity may be the lack of an adequate methodological toolkit for its analysis.
In this paper, I seek to fill this gap by proposing a fine-grained model for iconic
depictions of size and shape, one of the main iconic domains in sign languages.
The proposed model concerns the various ways in which the form resembles the
image in iconic signs, i. e., the elements inside the dotted oval in Figure 3. As
such, I will not attempt to describe the relation between the image and the
meaning. Although intra- and inter-linguistic variation is found in this relation
too, I consider this to be a matter more of metaphor than of depiction.