Outlined key points of Neil Cohn's "A Visual Lexicon" and "Visual Syntactic Structure"

A Visual Lexicon

Abstract
- Recognizing visual languages

Attention Units
- Panel or frame are the most basic representation in visual language
- The two obvious characteristics are the positive and negative elements, which translate the overall sequence
- Positive represent the figures and focal action of the panel and negative, the background
- Panels are categorized as the Lexical Representational Matrix(LRM)
- Micros are at the bottom of the LRM, featuring less than one grammatical entity, positively charged, often as close-ups
- Monos are singular entity panels, one level above micros
- Macros precede monos, containing more than one entity
- Above the hierarchy are Polymorphic panels with grammatical structures and event representation within boundaries of one frame.
- The “windowing of attention” is what Leonard Talmy(2001) referred to in an event that unfolds in full within a single panel

Maximal Windowing
- My bike is across the street from the bakery
- Jane sat across the table from John

Medial Gapping
- My bike is across from the bakery
- Jane sat across from John
Initial Gapping
- My bike is across the street
- Jane sat across the table

- Inclusionary panels embed a panel into another panel

Smaller than Syntax
- Panel structure change constantly internally, however, productive elements stay the same
- The sand narratives of the Australian Arrernte community appear mostly in fixed representations
- The sand narratives are created temporally, with each sign created and used on its own, represent lexical items, relating Arrernte to English-type morphology than the visual languages that use panels.
- Arrernte also enforces real time interactivity and a canvas of sand, which brings about disregard to detailed representation, however at the same time the sand narrative of the Australian Walpiri, being similar to the Arrernte have what Nancy Munn calls, an “actor item”, which is the simplistic pairing of objects to convey a large amount of narrative information.
- Path lines are another form of visual representation which depicts a trajectory attached to an object to give it aesthetic value or meaning, making it a unified semantic bundle.
- Closed class items like hearts, speed lines and word balloons contain higher degree of symbolism, while productive, nouns and verbs belong to an open class of visual signs.

Construction
- Constructions vary in size, form-meaning patterns in language and length can be longer than individual words.
- Set up(humorous dialogue/situation) – beat/pause(no text) – punch line(delivers the joke); Neal von Flue 2004

Conclusion
- A lexical item is meaningful unit or a combination of units of form-meaning pairing which can be either productive or non productive.

Visual Syntactic Structure

Transitional Syntax
- Analyzing the grouping of words and phrases into sentences is known as syntax
- Visual language syntax is the study of sequential images organized structurally.
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