| Annotation Metadata
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^"permissions":^"read":ӶӺ,"update":ӶӺ,"delete":ӶӺ,"admin":ӶӺ°,"user":^"id":6,"name":"Sarah Oberbichler"°,"id":"Wsmjejod7h","ranges":Ӷ^"start":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ25Ӻ","startOffset":0,"end":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/olӶ1Ӻ/liӶ3Ӻ","endOffset":210°Ӻ,"quote":"Communicatory signs are, of course, still very far from language. The distance between the two tends to be obscured by the wide-spread gratuitous application of the term “language” to a variety of behavioral manifestations that should be classified as signaling systems because they show none of the characteristics that we normally expect in a language. If we are to investigate the development of language it will be indispensable that we assess that distance and specify what intermediary points are necessary to bridge it. Before we can do this, however we shall have to adjust some of the concepts that have been used in attempts to describe language without reference to its purposive instrumental function.\nCharles Hockett’s “design features” (DF) are probably the most elaborate scheme to specify the characteristics of human language, and since they have been widely discussed in the literature, I shall use them as points of departure. They originated as a set of 13 descriptive criteria which were to help an observer to recognize “language” when he found it.Ӷ34Ӻ Since they were first shaped in an attempt to characterize spoken human language, they explicitly exclude all communication systems that are not implemented in a VOCAL-AUDITORY CHANNEL (DF1). Other design features \n(DF’s 2, 3, 4, 5, 9) concerning the purely technical aspects of signals, transmission, and reception, strengthen this somewhat anthropocentric restriction. The remaining 7 DF’s, however, focus on characteristics of communication systems in general and they constitute a very valuable approximation to the criteria we should want to use in order to distinguish communication from interaction, and language from signaling systems. The first of these, DF6, is SPECIALIZATION, by which Hockett intends that a sign is constituted, not by the mere energy change that is transmitted (i.e., the physical signal), but by the information or semiotic content the physical signal carries. This point, first formulated by Wiener and later applied to animal communication by Haldane,Ӷ35Ӻ has been accepted, as far as I know, by everyone who has come to investigate communication. It is an indispensable point because it rules out any form of direct mechanical interaction in which the receiver’s reaction (or consequent state) can be thermodynamically accounted for in terms of the amount of energy received. Hockett’s formulation, however, does not help us to discriminate communicatory signs from others that are no more than a perceptual event from which an observer draws an inductive inference (e.g., the sight of smoke, from which he infers the presence of fire; or a thundering sound, from which he infers a stampeding herd and that he had better get out of the way). If such inductive inference is not excluded, “communication becomes a vacuous term. There have been many attempts to patch the leak with subsidiary criteria but none has proven satisfactory.Ӷ36Ӻ It does not seem possible as long as one refuses to consider the basic purposive nature of communicatory signs. Susanne Langer analyzed this problem long agoӶ37Ӻ and the definitions she provided for “natural” and “artificial” signs are applicable to animal communication with only a very minor change.Ӷ38Ӻ\nThe fact that communicatory signs must be related to their meaning, not by an inferred connection (causal, correlational, part-whole, etc.), but by an altogether different kind of link, is partially implied by Hockett’s DF7 and DF8, SEMANTICITY and ARBITRARINESS. But the discussion in which he states that English words, such as “unicorn” or “and”, lack obvious semantic ties, shows that his SEMANTICITY is derived from the traditional theory of reference, which requires “real” objects as referents. The semanticity of signs is, indeed, an essential condition for communication, but the only limitation on the semantic ties and the items which they link to signs is that they must be the same for all users of the sign, i.e., their use must be conventional. This is inevitably so for all artificial signs if they satisfy the condition of ARBI’I’RARINESS (DF8), which prescribes that the meaning of a sign must not be derived from some perceptual analogy, or “iconic” relation, to the item it signifies (such that it could be inferred from the physical characteristics of the sign). This condition entails that a prospective communicator has no way of acquiring the proper use of a sign, except by agreement with the other users (when the sign is being newly created) or by learning it from them through CULTURAL TRANSMISSION (DF12). I can see no reason why specific signs and their semantic content should not be passed on by genetic transmission. This seems particularly plausible in the case of signs that originated as “incipient movements”Ӷ39Ӻ, i.e., as a part of a chain of movements that comes to signify the whole sequence (e.g., a resting dominant male’s raising its head as though it were about to get up and charge). Once such an incipient behavior is performed, not as the first step of the sequence to which it belonged, but as a means of obtaining the result of the whole chain (e.g., to restore the desired distance when another individual has come too close) it is on the way to becoming an “artificial” sign. In Hockett’s terminology it would, of course, be an iconic sign, but from the point of view of communication theory it is irrelevant whether the semantic link between sign and meaning is iconic or arbitrary—what matters is that this relation is a conventional one and thus, by definition, the same for sender and receiver.\nHockett’s DF10, DISPLACEMENT, is one of the two most relevant for the characterization of linguistic communication. He explicates it by saying: “We can talk about things that are remote in time, space, or both, from the site of the communicative transaction”Ӷ40Ӻ. Once more we agree, but the statement covers only half of what a viable criterion of “language” would have to contain. It is the remnant of the stimulus-response dogma that cripples this DF: the implication that a linguistic expression or sign cannot be used unless it refers to a specific occurrence (instance) of its “referent”. Though at one time Hockett says that DISPLACEMENT implies “the ability to discuss today what happened yesterday or what may come to pass tomorrow,” he then explains it in terms of information storage, and states; “Any delay between the reception of a stimulus and the appearance of the response means that the former has been coded into a stable spatial array, which endures at least until it is read off in the response”Ӷ41Ӻ. If we can read off today (response) what will be encoded tomorrow (stimulus), then the future would, indeed, by determining the present. Not for a moment would I suggest that this is what Hockett intended. But I would suggest that it comes out that way because he was bent on avoiding terms such as “concept” or “representation”. They would have smacked of mentalism or, worse, teleology—and that was taboo. \nLanguage allows us to talk, not only about things that are remote in time and/or space, but also about things that are nowhere and never happen at all. DISPLACEMENT has to become “symbolicity”. To turn into a symbol, the sign’s one-to-one relation to a perceptual “referent” must be severed.Ӷ42Ӻ That is to say, the sign must be semantically tied to a representation that is independent of the perceptual signals available at any time (not only at the time and place of the sign’s use). Thus, the semanticity of a linguistic sign is constituted, not by a tie that links it to a “thing”, but by one that links it to a representation or concept.Ӷ43Ӻ The fact that a sign, be it verbal or non-verbal, has acquired symbolicity, does of course not preclude that it still be used as a perception-bound sign whenever there is a perceptual input that corresponds to the representation it designates; nor does it preclude that it be used by the sender to trigger a conventional active response in the receiver (as in the case of an ‘imperative’). But what gives a sign the status of symbol is that it can be used without such a “stimulus” and without triggering the active response. The sign for tiger, for instance, will be a symbol when it can be used without reference to a present, past, or future perceptual instance of a tiger and without the receiver taking such steps as he would if he did perceive a tiger.\nThe difference between symbolicity and displacement comes out clearly if we look at the “language of the bees”Ӷ44Ӻ. In Hockett’s terms, the bees’ signs (“dancing”) always manifest DISPLACEMENT because their messages concern distant locations.Ӷ45Ӻ In my terms, the bees do not qualify for symbolicity because they have never been observed to communicate about distances, directions, food sources etc. without actually coming from, or going to a specific location. \nThe last feature (DF11) that is essential for the characterization of ‘‘language’’ is OPENNESS (or “productivity”). “New linguistic messages are coined freely and easily and, in context, are usually understood.” The technical particular that provides for OPENNESS is, DUALITY OF PATTERNING (DF13), i.e., the fact that the sign system shows “patterning in terms of arbitrary but stable meaningless signal-elements and also patterning in terms of minimum meaningful arrangements of these elements”Ӷ46Ӻ. The first of these two patternings concerns the composition of signals, i.e., the physical sign-vehicles. Hockett would call “language” only those communication systems that use a compositional code in which signals are assembled out of smaller recurrent units (phonemes, cenemes, etc.). This characteristic clearly is of enormous importance if we consider the economy of a coding system. From the evolutionary point of view it constitutes a spectacular advance. It involves the acquisition of special signal-composition mechanisms and, consequently, an increase of operational complexity and memory Space. As a criterion, it would exclude semiotic systems that have no alphabet and use only ideograms. From the communication point of view, this seems an unnecessary restriction. \nThe second type of patterning covered by DUALITY, however, is indispensable as criterion to distinguish linguistic systems from other sign systems. To be considered a “language”, a system must “provide certain patterns by which these elementary significant units (morphemes or meaningful signs can be combined into larger sequences, and conventions governing what sort of meanings emerge from the arrangements. These patterns and conventions are the grammar of the language”Ӷ47Ӻ. Though linguists have tended to consider “syntax” merely a set of rules that govern the combinability of words (i.e., signals), Hockett makes clear that the crucial point is that new meanings emerge from the combining of signs. Thus, in addition to the conventions that establish and fix the meaning of individual signs (lexical semantics), there must be a second set of conventions (grammar) that establishes and fixes the semantic function of sign combinations (syntactic or relational semantics). Since the single meaningful signs that are available to the user at a given time are always a closed set (lexicon), OPENNESS can be achieved only by the rule-governed meaningful combination of the available signs.\nTo sum up this discussion of linguistic communication, I would suggest three criteria to distinguish ‘‘language’’, all of which are necessary but individually insufficient: \n\nThere must be a set (lexicon) of communicatory signs, i.e., perceptual items whose meaningfulness (SEMANTICITY) is constituted by a conventional tie (semantic nexus) and not by an inferential one.\nThese signs must be symbols, i.e., linked to representations (SYMBOLICITY) therefore they can be sent without reference to perceptual instances of the items they designate, and received without “triggering” a behavioral response in the receiver. As symbols they merely activate the connected representation.\nThere must be a set of rules (GRAMMAR) governing the combination of signs into strings such that certain combinations produce a new semantic content in addition to the individual content of the component signs.","highlights":Ӷ^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°,^"jQuery321084609571877238732":^°°Ӻ,"text":"","order":"mw-content-text","category":"Argumentation2","data_creacio":1568062459856°
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