The idea that language is fundamentally arbitrary，and that there is no resemblance between the signs of language and the thoughts they stand for，is one of the oldest commonly held views in linguistic thought. The first significant challenge to this dogma in the respectable philological tradition is Roman Jakobson's famous article“Quest for the Essence of Language” (1965). Recent studies in cognitive linguistics are also against this traditional view. Instead，they claim that linguistic elements are lined up orderly in syntax. The sequence of grammatical elements is governed by the principles of iconicity in language. The intuition behind the iconicity is quite simple：The structure of language reflects in some way the structure of experience，that is，the structure of the world， including the perspective imposed on the world by the speaker. The structure of language is therefore explained by the structure of experience to the extent that the two match. For example，Mao Zedong's famous sentences “才饮长沙水，又食武昌鱼”are the reflections of the historical events，that is，the order of the linguistic structures coincides with that of the two events.

The major types of iconicity in language which have frequently been proposed are those of order，distance，and complexity.

4.1 iconicity of order

Iconicity of order refers to the similarity between temporal events and the linear arrangement of elements in a linguistic construction. Caesar's historic words“eni，vidi，vici (I came，I saw，I conquered)” is a good case to prove this type of iconicity. Iconicity of order reflects the consistency of language with human cognition and the objective world. Let us consider the following two pairs of sentences：

（16）a. He opened the bottle and poured himself a glass of wine.

b.*He poured himself a glass of wine and opened the bottle.

（17）a. He jumped onto his horse and rode out into the sunset.

b.*He rode out into the sunset and jumped onto his horse.

It is obvious that in (16a) and (17a)，the sequence of the two clauses corresponds to the natural temporal order of events. In contrast，(16b) and (17b) are odd，to say the least，because they do not comply with this natural sequence. As far as the rules of syntax proper are concerned，nothing is wrong with (16b) and (17b). However， the sentences are unacceptable because the order in which the clauses are arranged violates the principle of order iconicity.