title: Language and the origin of semiosis
creator: Allott, Robin
subject: Semantics
description: Language is the type of semiosis which has been most closely examined and which has served as a model for considering other forms of semiosis. Semiotics has been based, certainly in the case of language, very much on the proposition of Saussure that the sign is arbitrary - a questionable idea (Holdcroft 1991) - and that the sign is conventional or social. If this fundamental idea of semiotics, and linguistics, is discarded, what does this do for semiotics, the 'science' of signs ? This paper seeks to trace out the implications for semiotics of a very different account from Saussure's of the origin, development and functioning of language, leaving it open whether one should conclude, in the light of this, that language does not constitute a paradigm or model for a general science of semiotics (and is not a typical or useful example of a semiotic system) or that language should be treated as the paradigm but a totally changed paradigm, so that the new view of language will require a restructuring of semiotics and lead to a much more biological and indeed neurological approach to the science of signs. 
publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
contributor: Nöth, Winfried
date: 1994
type: Book Chapter
type: PeerReviewed
format: text/html
identifier: http://cogprints.org/3113/1/semiosis.htm
identifier:   Allott, Robin  (1994) Language and the origin of semiosis.  [Book Chapter]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/3113/