🚀 go-pugleaf

As usual, a problem people in one discipline are pondering has already 
been studied in depth by folks in another.  

Iconic communication using a visual modality is in heavy use by the 
hearing impaired in the form of American Sign Language and its non-English 
analogues.  There are even systems for transcribing ASL [*] 

Another system used by Special Education researchers is called Blissymbolics.
It's a written iconic system that is touted as easy to learn, effective in 
training handicapped persons who are not able use language in any of its 
usual forms, and as flexible and expressive as any other representational 
system for natural language.  I don't have a reference on it, but any 
Special Ed department would.  

It was developed earlier this century by a Canadian named Bliss for use as 
an international language.  It appears not to have caught on in that role, 
but there was a strong flurry of interest in it among Special Ed types in 
the seventies.  Blissymbols, unlike ASL transcription systems, would adapt 
themselves easily and economically to computer graphics.

					Herb Stahlke
 
[*] Donald F. Moores. 1974.  Nonvocal systems of verbal behavior.  In Language 
    Perspectives--Acquisition, Redardation, and Intervention, edited by 
    Richard L. Schiefelbusch and Lyle L. Lloyd.  Baltimore:  University Park 
    Press.  Pp. 377-418.