For me, existence of a rock is a 'signal' of its physical presence to the environment regardless of subjective element of humans. Boris Shoshensky
---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Frances Kelly" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Sign Defined Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 14:54:36 -0400 Frances to Boris with thanks... 1. You partly stated in effect that the word "sign" is often ambiguous for you, and therefore you prefer instead to use the word "signal" or "unit of information" as possible substitutes. It is agreed that regrettably there is some ambiguity with the term sign, but there may also be some ambiguity with any alternates selected to replace it. The issue of whether a sign or signal or unit is mainly an objective construct or a subjective construct might be put aside temporarily, although the root source of such things should indeed be part of their definition. 2. Under angloamerican pragmatism a "signal" was originally deemed a species or one kind of indexic sign, where sign is the overall umbrella. Under this Peircean pragmatism a sign as a genus furthermore was deemed to have three grand divisions, which were roughly called informative grammatics, and evaluative significs or critics, and evocative methodeutics or rhetorics. These three divisions where later refined by Morrisean pragmatism to each have three dimensions called syntactics and semantics and pragmatics. 3. The original system of signs as posited by the pragmatist Peirce had a triadic typology wherein the genus of signs had the three main species of icons and indexes and symbols. This system of signs was basically logical, but for signing it was applied broadly to all mechanisms of matter and all organisms of life as sign users or signers. The later system of signs as posited by the pragmatist Morris had a dyadic typology wherein the genus of signs had two main species of signals and symbols. This system of signs was basically biotical and behavioral, but for signing it was limited to only human organisms as sign users or signers. 4. It was held by Peirce that at the initial grammatic division or stage of any sign situation, which event he called an act of semiosis, every sign would bear information. The label grammatics was applied to all informative signs, and not only to those signs of linguistic languages. Just specifically what information is however that a sign bears or has, as a represented syntactic form and a referred semantic object or content and an interpreted pragmatic effect, is not exactly clear to me. The most basic "unit" of information would presumably occur only at the immediate level of syntactic grammatics with the represented form of a sign vehicle, but this is also not fully clear to me. Any informative sign reaching the level of pragmatic grammatics would be like a lingual term or proposition or argument, but there are nonlingual or nonverbal correlates posited for these effects, so that a pictorial depiction for example can be a quasi proposition. 5. The seat of any further evaluative "meaning" that the grammatic information a sign might yield is found in the information a pragmatic sign might bear, the least of which can be a proto nonlingual term or a proper lingual term. The sign at its grammatic level would thus refer to an object with a content, but it would not yield or have as yet any "meaning" nor need it to be an informative sign. 6. Incidentally, it is assumed by me that we agree a sign can be located in say a sign system that is either nonlingual or lingual, and then in a lingual sign system that is either nonverbal or verbal. This suggests correctly for me that signs can be of semiotic signage or of linguistic language. In my revisionist manner, this suggestion cries for a further umbrella under which the branches of semiotics and linguistics would fall, such as say semiology as the science of signs, but this semiology would be in the broader angloamerican sense of semiotics and not in the narrower francoeuropean sense of semiology. The difference in the two semiotics would be that semiological semiotics would not be exclusively of logics as it now is, but rather would be of all signs or signage, yet would also be preparatory to the signs of language. This entails that logics then would not be a mere synonym for semiotics, and would come later under methodology as one normative science aligned as aesthetics and ethics and logics, so that all of semiotic and linguistic semiology would prepare for all of methodology. This would tend to reduce semiotics from the lofty logical position it now occupies. It is a revision of sign theory that is likely to be rejected by current semioticians and semiologists. The revision is attractive to me because it admits to signs as being other than only logical logons, and places linguistics along with semiotics as equal theoretical sciences, rather than linguistics as only a practical science unnecessary for theoretical logics. The methodic logics here however would be a degenerative indirect version of pure ideal logics which is held to exist as an unattainable objective construct. The signs of methodic logics might to a degree even be arbitrary invented, but the logons of idealistic logics upon which logical signs must be based and from which they must be derived are accidentally discovered and as the disposed tendencies of natural telic evolution. ____________________________________________________________ Criminal Lawyers - Click here. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2241/fc/BLSrjpYbd6v2mBYfjlzgxqZHJDdcZF d9FWBaSZJYpRpchagPBLDhzhxjjqw/
