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For a newly born baby linguistic signs that the baby begins to interact with are not signs, just like any other kinds of entities constitutive of the baby’s environmental niche are not signs, either. If we consider the possible orientational effects of different environmental constituents, the sound of a thing accidentally hitting the floor will not be essentially different from the sound of a word uttered by someone, although their respective representations as specific states of neuronal activity will, undoubtedly, differ. Only when an interaction with the niche constituents of the same kind has occurred a certain number of times causing the elementary representational pattern to acquire a more or less regular character, elementary representations form a complex structure. It is this complex structure that, ultimately, enables us to speak of the emergence of a causal relation between two enactions as a result of which one entity becomes a sign of the other. But the most interesting thing happens after such a relation has been established. A causal relation between two entities (more precisely, between their behavioral enactions) takes the form of a complex representation incorporating elementary representations of these enactions. One entity’s enaction activates a corresponding elementary representation which induces an active state of another elementary representation. In such cases we say that one (ostensive) entity is the sign of another (non-ostensive) entity. But, and this is important, there is not a law that predetermines the sequence of an organism’s interactions with the environmental constituents in such a way that an interaction with a linguistic entity necessarily either precedes or follows an interaction with a non-linguistic entity. By inference, just like a word may function as a sign of some entity, an entity may function as a sign of the word, that is, a semiotic relationship rests on mutual causality. This inference unavoidably follows from the fact that signs constituting natural language are nothing but empirical objects included into an organism’s interactional domain on exactly the same grounds as all other non-linguistic objects, namely, on the grounds of their ostensibility/perceptibility. Yet in linguistic philosophy (particularly, in semiotic) there is a tradition to treat linguistic objects as a priori ostensive entities whereas all nonlinguistic objects that display a causal relationship with linguistic objects are treated as a priori non-ostensive entities. This epistemological premise is the cornerstone of all current theories of signs (cf. Keller 1998). But how adequate is it? Where linguistic semiotic went wrong If we try to conjecture an organism’s domain of interactions (its niche) as some physical space constituted by a set of perceptible objects, the proportion of linguistic objects found in it may turn out to be negligibly small if not zero. A human may be in a situation devoid of any acoustic or visual linguistic objects but full of different objects of a nonlinguistic character. What happens in the course of this human’s perception of (cognitive interaction with) these objects? First, all perceived objects are categorized as recognizable and unrecognizable. In a trivial perceptual situation the latter would be far less in number than the former, or there may even be none at all. A recognizable object is an object which, when involved into an interactional activity, activates a complex representation (mental experiential/mnemonic structure, or concept). Constitutive of this complex representation is an elementary representation of a preceding interaction with this object, or a set of such elementary representations. Normally (that is, in the case of humans in good physical and mental health whose biological development took place under conditions defined as natural for the genus homo sapiens), this set would include a representation of the interaction with another, linguistic object, which stands in a causal relation to the perceived object. Both linguistic and non-linguistic objects (that is, their percepts) contribute to the formation of a single concept on equal epistemic grounds, that is, through experience which results in specific states of neuronal activities within the nervous system, or representations. Depending on which parts of the concept and to what degree of intensity are activated during object perception, the outcome configuration may comprise a representation of one or another linguistic object (such as a word) as a possible name for the perceived object. An important role in the process is played both by the characteristics of the perceptual situation (the totality of factors bearing on it directly or indirectly) and the observer’s individual experience. Contrarily, an unrecognizable object is an object which, when involved in an interactional activity resulting in a specifically configured complex representation, does not make it possible for this particular configuration to “turn on” an existing mental structure comprising a representation of an interaction with a linguistic object, drawing it into a common conceptual structure. As a result, the problem of naming (conceptually identifying) the object may arise. Second, in the conjectured situation just described the linguistic object has the status of a non-ostensive entity because the observer who perceives, identifies, and names the ostensive entity moves from the non-linguistic object to the linguistic object. This means that the perceived (ostensive) non-linguistic object enters a semiotic relationship with the linguistic (non-ostensive) object, so we can speak of the semiotic multiplication of the world. It is important to note that such multiplication stands in direct relation to the measure of empirical (metaphysical) experience of the world an observer has, including, as a default condition, his broad experience of linguistic objects (cf. Bod 1998). The semiotic multiplication of the world leads to an increase of the possible interpretations of sign relations in a geometric progression; consequently, the capability of processing categorized cognitive experience embodied in signs in a non-contradictory manner becomes of paramount importance, making linguistic communication effective in the long run. As Eco (1984: 1) pointed out, “the concept of sign must be disentangled from its trivial identification with the idea of coded equivalence and identity; the semiosic process of interpretation is present at the very core of the concept of sign.” And, finally, third: since, to the observer, linguistic signs are empirical objects, perceived interactions between signs may also result in an emergence of causal relations. This assertion is relevant for the understanding of the genesis of linguistic competence (understood here in the generative sense as an abstract idealization of a native speaker’s knowledge of the grammar) as it allows for a new approach to the cognitive origins of natural language grammar. Conclusion As I have tried to argue, the traditional philosophical/linguistic analysis of semiotic phenomena is based on the false assumption that, epistemologically, linguistic and nonlinguistic entities possess different ontologies. As a result, theoretical linguistic thought has been unable to come to grips with the reality of language which defies any attempts to mold it after logically construed models governed by sets of logically defined rules. The new epistemology of autopoiesis provides an effective alternative to the heritage of analytical philosophy in understanding what language is and what language does for an observer speaking to another observer in a consensual domain of their interactions with the observed world.()，英语毕业论文，英语毕业论文 |
