Linguistic signs: types and properties

Linguistic signs, though of semiotic nature, differ considerably from the semiotic signs of artificial languages or codes. Linguistic signs are not conventional labels or marks of things and phenomena of reality. Their use is not situationally conditioned, they can be used at any moment of time in any speech situation. Linguistic signs are lingual reflections and representations of extralingual phenomena, which are commonly termed extralingual referents of linguistic signs. Such referents can be of different ontological status: objects, phenomena, categories, relations. Those linguistic signs which have their objective referents_in the outer world are considered to possess certain referential ability / referentiality /, i. e. the ability to refer to a referent.

There are two different ways of lingual representation: nomination and signification. Therefore, the two different types of linguistic signs are distinguished in accordance with the way they represent concep­tual content: nominators and significators.

Nominators are nominative units (these being nominative words in the most), which represent conceptual content by way of nomination. It follows that nomination is the function of those linguistic signs which possess denotative ability since they can denote and nominate the referent they refer to. /Referentiality appears characteristic of most nominative signs (units) of language. It can also be found with some grammatical signs, with some categorial markers. Compare for instance, the func­tion of. the.tense-markers expressing objective time differencies/.

Nomination a complex function implying the reflection and designation of something on the part of a nominative linguistic sign. Nomination is the distinguishing feature of a notional lexical unit which serves for the verbalization of a piece of semiological content and for the designation of its referent.

Significative linguistic signs (significators) are devoid of denota­tive power and of nominative.ability. They do not.,.denote anything but signify / = or signal/ the very fact of lingual expression of some conceptual content. Such significative linguistic signs can be qualified as grammatical devices which represent conceptual content by way of signification.

Thus, the notional conceptual content is rendered lingually by the notional nominative units of the lexical type primarily whereas the propositional semiological content is expressed regularly by the grammatical units of predicative type. Lexical and grammatical means of linguistic expression interact in the process of expressing conceptual content. Grammar is concerned with the function of grammatical devices in the explication of conceptual content. Lexicology, on the contrary, studies the function of nominative units in their relation to the matter of concept, and the regularities of nomination.

Grammatical theories of linguistic relations proceed from the as­sumption that linguistic relations reflect objective relations between things and phenomena of reality /isomorphically/ but indirectly through their correlation with the corresponding conceptual reflections of objec­tive relations in human mind.

 

                                            2.3 Sign systems

Humans being social beings have the need to share information about what goes on in their minds, what they experience and perceive. We can achieve this in many ways – we express our feelings with the help of gestures, facial expressions, signs. In its wide meaning the word ‘sign’ may be defined as a form which stands for something else, which we understand as its meaning.

E.g. raising one’s brows is understood as a sign of surprise, whereas combing one’s hair is not usually interpreted as a meaningful sin, but it may become one if it is intended to impress somebody favourably, looking neat.

There are three main types of signs distinguished on basis of the quality of the meaning they express: indexical, iconic, symbolic.

An indexical sign or index, points to something in its immediate vicinity, as is suggested by the etymology of the Latin word ‘index’ ‘ pointing finger’. The clearest case of an indexical sign is a signpost for traffic pointing in the direction of the next town N. Thus, the meaning of such a sign is “ Go in this direction to get to N.). But facial expression such as raising one’s eyebrows is also an indexical sign as it points to a person’s internal emotional state of surprise.

An iconic sign, or icon, (from Greek eikon “replica”) provides a visual, auditory or any other perceptual image of the thing it stands for. An iconic sign is similar to the thing it represents. The road sign that warns drivers to look out for children near a school pictures two or three children crossing the road on a zebra crossing. The image is of course only vaguely similar to reality since, at a particular moment, only one or any number of children may be running across the street, but its general meaning is very clear nevertheless. The idea of danger caused by animals on roads is also pictured by iconic signs such as images of cows, deer, geese, horses, toads, etc. Pictures of lorries, cars, tractors, cycles, cycling paths, rivers, bridges, falling rocks, bends in the roads, etc. are usually represented iconically.

Unlike indexical and iconic signs, a symbolic sign, or symbol, does not have a natural link between the form and and the thing represented, but only has a conventional link. The traffic sign of an inverted triangle is one such symbol: it does not have a natural link between its form and its meaning ‘give right of way’. The link between its form and meaning is purely conventional. The same applies to military emblems, the money signs (e.g. $), almost all flags and, of course, most of language. Thus, there is no natural link at all between the word form ‘surprise’ and its meaning. The term ‘symbolic’ as used in linguistics is understood in the sense that, by general consent, people have ‘agreed’ upon the pairing of a particular form with a particular meaning. This sense of ‘symbolic’ goes back to the original meaning of the Greek word symbolon ’a token of recognition’ used between two guests or friends, e.g. a ring broken into two halves, which allowed them to identify each other after a long time by matching the two parts and checking whether they fit together. The two halves of the ring are inseparable, just like the form of a word and its meaning.

The discipline that studies systems of signs in all their manifestations is semiotics (from Greek semeion ‘sign’). Human language is the most elaborate system of signs but semiotics also looks at other forms of human and non-human communicative behaviour such as gestures, clothing, keeping distances, etc. Animals have very sophisticated sign systems, too (see Lec. 1).

There is a hierarchy of abstraction amongst the three types of signs. Indexical signs are the most ‘primitive’ and the most limited signs in that they are restricted to the ‘here’ and ‘now’. Yet, indexical signs are very wide-spread in human communication, for example, in body language, traffic and other signs and areas such as advertising. Most commercial products are too prosaic to be attractive in themselves, thy need to be associated with more attractive surroundings. E.g. Marlboro cigarettes are indexically related to the adventurous life of the American cowboy.

Iconic signs are more complex in that their understanding requires the recognition of similarity. The iconic link of similarity needs to be consciously established by the observer. The image may be fairly similar as with ikons, which are pictures of a holy person venerated in the Russian or Greek Orthodox Church, or they may be fairly abstract as in slylized pictures of men and women on toilet doors, or of cars or planes in road signs. Icons are probably not found in the animal kingdom.

Symbolic signs are the exclusive prerogative of humans. People have more communicative needs that pointing to things and replicating things. Humans want to talk about things which are more abstract in nature such as events in the past and future, objects which are distant from them, hopes about peace, etc. This can be achieved by means of symbols, which humans all over the world have created for the purpose of communicating all possible thoughts. The most elaborate system of symbolic signs is natural language in all its farms: the most universal form is spoken language, at certain phase of civilization and intellectual development a written form of language develops; and people who are deaf have developed a sign language, which is largely based on conventionalized links between gestures and meanings.

Indexical signs reflect a more general principle, whereby things that are contiguous can stand for each other. E.G. we strongly associate a piece of art with the artist and hence, can say things like I am curious to see the Turners.

Iconic signs reflect the more general principle of using an image for the real thing. Farmers have applied this strategy for centuries by putting up scarecrows in their fields, which the birds take for real enemies.

Symbolic signs allow the human mind to go beyond the limitations of contiguity and similarity and establish symbolic links between any form and any meaning. Thus, a rose can stand for love and the owl for wisdom.

The three types of signs may be represented as follows:

Index                                  Icon                         Symbol

link form & meaning           link form & meaning         link form & meaning

 

based on contiguity             based on similarity   based on convention

 

Communicative context

Human language is the product of human society, it is the perfect means of human communication. The communicative function which is the primary socially conditioned one, presupposes mental, speech and communicative activities in the process of social intercourse.

The communicative function of language is realized under the appropriate conditions of the communicative context, i. e. the com­plex of different objective and subjective factors which influence the realization of the function by either favouring or restricting the process of speech communication.                                

There are two types of communicative context. The macro com­municative context is represented by the social and cultural conditions of communication. The social status of the communicants, their cultural and philosophical outlook are the background factors which lay con­straints on the communicative use of language.

The micro communicative context is the very objective speech situation in which the process of speech communication takes place.

Communicative grammatical theories deal with the speech conditions and with the processes of speech communication which predetermine the effectiveness of the communicative use of language.

According to the principles of the general " speech act" theory the communicative speech situation can be conventionally subdivided into the three spheres centering round the main components of such situa­tions: the sphere of speaking with the Speaker as its center, the sphere of hearing with the Hearer (Addressee) in its centre and the lingually coded message or the Text.

 

4. Language and Thought

The fact that language can be used to express our thoughts gives rise to some interesting questions. How are language and thought related? Can we think without language? Is our thinking molded by the structure of our language? These are very difficult questions, thus, conflicting opin­ions have been advanced. The following observations review the latest developments concerning the problem of language and thought.

If we define thought as conscious mental activity, we can observe first that thought, or at least certain kinds of thought, can take place com­pletely independently of language. The simplest example is that of music. We have all had the experience of being absorbed in listening to an instru­mental work or mentally running through a familiar tune. Language is simply not involved. (The existence of music with lyrics is of course beside the point.) Musical composition is in no way dependent on language, so far as the actual process of creation is concerned, and the same would seem to be true of various other forms of creative or problem-solving activity.

Another example - The sculptor at work is in no significant sense guided by language. He may, of course, receive much of his instruction through language, talk about his creations, and even entertain himself with an internal verbal soliloquy as he chips away with hammer and chisel. But such verbalization does not appear to be instrumental in his creative activity. There may be many stretches of time during which he is so busy conceptualizing forms and techniques that words disappear entirely from his thoughts.

Another example still - Much the same is true of a person engrossed in solving a jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly perceiving that two independently completed sections belong together is in no way a linguistic accomplishment, although one may subsequently exclaim, " Aha! This must go over here! ”

A further argument for the existence of thought without language is the common experience of wishing to express some idea but being unable to find a satisfactory way to put it into words. If thought were impossible without language, this problem would never arise.

Nevertheless, much of our thought clearly does involve language, some of it in an essential way. Some scholars have lamented the " tyranny" of language and claimed that the " world view" of a person or community is shaped by the language used. However, the problem of assessing the in­fluence of language on thought deserves to be treated with great caution. Certainly people have sometimes been misled by a blind reliance on words, but we can recognize such cases and set the record straight; if language were all that tyrannical, we would be unable to perceive that it sometimes leads us into error when we arc not being careful. Furthermore, we must entertain the possibility that when we think in words, our thought is not molded by language at all; there may be a more general human cognitive capacity at play, for which language merely serves as a medium, just as music serves as a medium for the composer's creative powers.

Scholars generally agree that words greatly facilitate certain kinds of thinking by serving as counters, or symbols, that can easily be manipulated. We all have a fairly good idea of what arithmetic is; we know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We also know the word arithmetic, which serves as a label for this conceptual complex. When we think about arithmetic (how it fits into the rest of mathematics, how it is taught in our schools, whether our children are good at it, whether we like it), we can use the word arithmetic as a symbol in our thought Processes. It is much easier to manipulate the word arithmetic in our minds than to operate with the entire conceptual complex that this word symbolizes. Tire use of verbal symbols thus makes thought easier in '" any cases. One might even argue that some kinds of thinking would be impossible without the existence of these convenient counters to operate with.

Verbal labels are particularly important in the realm of abstract ideas. Justice, democracy, liberty, communism, and education are familiar terms, yet it would be very hard to pin down their meanings precisely. Justice does not evoke a concrete image in the way table does. We can usually agree on whether or not something is a table, but how sure can we ever be about justice? When is something correctly labeled obscene? Does the word liberty have any real significance? We certainly have at least a vague idea of what is meant by these terms, but their meanings tend to be quite elusive and to vary considerably from person to person. These concepts probably would not exist at all if there were no words for them, serving to gather and hold together a number of vague, not very coherent notions. Because they are abstract words like these are quite loosely tied to reality. In a sense, they are almost empty. If one is not careful, they can become emotionally charged labels functioning only to brand someone or some­thing as good or bad. It is unfortunately very easy to call someone a com­munist or to do something in the defense of liberty, and it is very easy to be misled by the empty use of words.

What is the relation between our thought processes and the structure of our language? Is language a tyrannical master, relentlessly forcing our thinking to follow certain well-worn paths, blinding us to all other possi­bilities? Is our conception of the world crucially conditioned by the lan­guage we speak, as some people have claimed? These questions can be posed with respect both to words and to grammatical structures.

We have seen that a word can be helpful in forming, retaining, or operating with the concept it designates. We have also seen that no two languages match precisely in the way in which they break up conceptual space and assign the pieces to words as meanings: English distinguishes between green and blue while other languages use a single word to designate this entire range of the color spectrum; some languages have words for individual kinds of trees but lack a general term, analogous to English tree, to designate the entire class. Differences like these extend throughout the vocabulary and will be found no matter which two lan­guages arc compared. Our question, then, is to what extent these dif­ferences in the linguistic categorization of experience are responsible for corresponding differences in thought.

There is little doubt that lexical differences have some effect on thought, at least in the sense that it is easier to think about things we have words for. We are accustomed to labeling some colors with the term red and others with the term blue. When presented with a typically red or blue object we can quickly name its color; the terms red and blue are readily available to us, for we have had lifelong experience in calling some things and others blue. We will have little trouble remembering the color of a red or blue object. Suppose, however, that you are presented -it-h an object that is an extremely dark shade of brown, so dark that it is 1mnst black. There is no common term in English for this particular color. Most likely you will hesitate to call it either brown or black, because it is not typical of the colors usually called brown or black. Eventually you may resort to a phrase like very dark brown or brownish black, but such a phrase will probably not come to mind so quickly and readily as red or blue. We are not so accustomed to distinguishing shades of brown from one another as we are to distinguishing red from blue. It will prove harder to remember a particular shade of brown (as opposed to other shades of brown) than to remember the color of a typically red object. If our language, on the other hand, had a separate word for this very dark shade of brown and if we were accustomed to categorizing objects of this color by describing them with this word, there might not be such diffi­culties.

Our thinking is thus conditioned by the linguistic categorization of experience in that it is easier to operate with concepts coded by single words than with concepts for which no single term is available. The way in which one's language breaks up conceptual space thus has at least a minimal effect on thought. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this influence is in any significant way a tyrannical or even a powerful one. We are perfectly capable of forming and mentally manipulating concepts for which no word is available. We can make up imaginary entities at will and, if we so choose, proceed to name them. For example, imagine a unicorn with a flower growing out of each nostril. No word exists for such an entity, but it is easy to think about it nevertheless. We could dream up a name for it, but we do not have to.

What about the grammatical structures of a language? Do they force our thinking into certain customary grooves to the exclusion of other possibilities? Do they determine our way of viewing the world, as many scholars have maintained?

Overtly, languages sometimes display very striking differences in gram­matical structure. Commonly, languages differ in the grammatical categories that are obligatorily represented in sentences. One such category is gender.

CF gender characteristics in English, German, Ukrainian, etc.

 (These distinctions, by the way, are grammatical ones; they have nothing very directly to do with sex.)

Gender is of course only one example. Number, case, tense, and aspect are other categories often found in familiar European languages. And many languages mark categories that seem more exotic to speakers of English. It is not unusual for the plural to be marked differently depending on whether the objects involved are close together or scattered about. Certain Navaho verbs of handling, meaning such things as 'drop' or 'pick up, ' van' in form depending on the shape of the thing that is handled. Thus one form will be used if the object is round or amorphous in shape; another form will be used if it is long, slender, and rigid; and so on. Sentences in the Siouan languages contain markers indicating the speaker's estimation of the veracity of what is expressed.

No one denies that these overt grammatical differences exist. If two languages are different enough in structure, a literal, item-by-item trans­lation of a sentence from one language into the other can seem most bizarre to speakers of the second language. It is quite another thing, how­ever, to claim that these differences in grammatical structure entail sig­nificant differences in the thought processes of the speakers. No evidence has ever been presented to support this claim. Grandiose assumptions about one's world view being determined by the structure of one's language have never been shown to be anchored in fact. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the grammatical structure of our language holds our thoughts in a tyrannical, vise-like grip.

It is not really surprising that no such evidence has been found. The claims arc based on really very superficial aspects of linguistic structure. If French nouns are divided into two gender classes while English nouns are not, so what? No valid psychological conclusions follow from this arbitrary, rather uninteresting grammatical fact.

                                            Part 2

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