Dear Jean-Yves Beziau & the list!
The one and only linguist, who knew both Saussure and Peirce ' by
heart', was Roman Jakobson. He never agreed with the idea of
arbitrariness of the sign. He even took the famous 'Cours' compiled by
the students of Saussure as a misunderstanding, a misintepretation of
the views of de Saussure.
Roman Jakobson was a linguist with a great influence on French
(European) structuralism, However, it was only his work on distictions
of phonemes, with Halle, that was taken into attention. La differance
became the focus. Leaving his work on sound similarities (with e.g.
Waugh) in shadow. Sound and meaning are intimately connected, according
to Jakobson.
The idea of icons and iconicity stems from visual metaphors. Sound
shapes cannot be understood or studied from this perspective. Sound
shapes are something experientally familiar to every child before birth.
It is only after birth that a child looks and sees. The sound shapes of
the mother tongue are deeply familiar to every child before birth.
From all we know, this is a logical conclusion. In no need of empirical
verification (whatever it may mean in practice).
As a linguist, Jakobson was an experimentalist, just as was Peirce.
Saussure, on the other hand, was a thoroughbread theorist, a prime
example of 'seminary philosophy', in Peirce's terms.
The mistake Saussure (according to his students) made, was to take a
WORD as a good-enough approximation of basic units of language.
Anyone capable of thinking, can understand that this view on the units
of language applies perfectly to nouns. But not to language, in general.
Peirce expressed his annoyance in respect to prevalent terminology in
grammar. He stated that it is 'preposterous' to call PRONOUNS byt that
name. They should be called PREDEMONSTRATIVES was his firm view.
The famous picture in the Cours presents a picture of a tree and ITS
NAME. So, the whole of Saussure's theorizing relies on naming things.
(Just as Foucault originally titled his book Le Mots et le choses. )
Nominalism, the main target of Peirce's critique, was and still is
about Le Mots et le chose. Naming objects.
Hilbert took a pint of beer on a table as his example of mathematical
(imaginary) objects. Mathematics, however, is not about naming objects,
but about making connections.
The same goes for language, as a vehicle in conveying ideas and
thoughts. It is all about making connections.
The dead-line for abstracts in this most interesting workshop lies just
a few days ahead this date of announcement in the Peirce list.
So I just express a wish to have Roman Jacobson and his work taken up,
in one way or another, during this meeting & discussions in Genova.
With respect,
Kirsti Määttänen,
University of Tampere,School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
jean-yves beziau kirjoitti 14.9.2016 15:27:
This year is the centenary of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de
Linguistique Générale.
I am organizing a workshop next January in Geneva within the
centenary congress:
The Arbitariness of the Sign
http://www.clg2016.org/en/geneva/programme/workshops/the-arbitrariness-of-the-sign/
[1]
This is a follow up of a workshop I have organized at the University
of
Neuchâtel in 2005, with the followig book as byproduct:
La pointure du symbole
https://www.editionspetra.fr/livres/la-pointure-du-symbole [2]
The deadline to submit an abstract (either in English or French) is
September 18.
Jean-Yves Beziau
http://www.jyb-logic.org/ [3]
Links:
------
[1]
http://www.clg2016.org/en/geneva/programme/workshops/the-arbitrariness-of-the-sign/
[2] https://www.editionspetra.fr/livres/la-pointure-du-symbole
[3] http://www.jyb-logic.org/
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