Degrees of iconicity in the lexicon

Iconicity is an important part of language: e.g., there is substantial diagrammatic iconicity in the lexicon due to recurrences of form-meaning connections in morphemes, submorphemes, phonesthemes, and word-affinity relations. However, the term morpheme has been applied to phenomena which do not exhibit iconicity. And, differential polysemy across words constrains cross-lexical recurrence of meaning. It emerges that the lexicon exhibits degrees of iconicity, as defined by two competing tendencies for sound: one towards total iconicity, the other towards total non-iconicity (arbitrariness).