【正确答案】正确答案：Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative; a conventionality of language makes a language be passed from generation to generation, and makes learning a language laborious. The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention. The terms motivation and constraint describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. The form of the signifier of a generalized car or a traffic sign is determined by the convention that is accepted by the users of the code. Motivated signs are iconic signs; they are characterized by a natural relation between signifier and signified. A portrait or a photograph is iconic, in that the signifier represents the appearance of the signified. The faithfulness or the accuracy of the representation—the degree to which the signified is re-presented in the signifier—is an inverse measure of how conventionalized it is. It is important to recognize that (i) in signs of high motivation, the signified is the determining influence, and (ii) in signs of low motivation, convention determines the form of the signifier. Therefore, convention plays a key role in our understanding of any sign. Convention serves as the social dimension of signs. We may not understand the unmotivated verbal sign for car the French use, but we understand the road signs in France in so far as they are iconic.