3 Types of signs:

1. Icon – a sign that has a direct link with the objects it stands for. The signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating thу signified (sound effects in radio drama, imitative gestures)

2. Index – a sign which would lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed. The signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way to the signified (natural sings: smoke, thunder, echoes, interjections etc.)

3. Symbol/symbolic – a sign which would lose the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant (words). The signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional – so that the relationship must be learnt.

Linguistic sign & their specific features

1. In most semiotic systems signs are not emotionally colored, they are neutral in terms of emotions or evaluations. The word as the central linguistic sign is usually loaded with some connotative meaning. In most semiotic systems can have only one meaning signs but the majority of words are polysemantic.

Being arbitrary by nature, the word can still become motivated as a result of some word formation process (derivatives, compound words etc.). if linguistic signs were to be totally arbitrary, languahe wouldn’t be a system & its communicative function would be destroyed.

While a sign is not determined extralinguistically, it is object intralinguistic determination.

Unlike signs in other semiotic systems, linguistic signs (words & morphemes) are productive elements, because they can be used to create new signs (word formation).

Conclusion: language is a unique & very complex semiotic system.

R. Jacobson: 3 ways of interpreting a verbal sign:

1. translation into other signs of the same language (barchellor – an unmarried man)

2. translation into another language

3. translation into another non-verbal system of symbols (gestures)

Conclusion: the meaning of every word/phrase is a semiotic fact.

Lecture 2 Language & thought

All the theories range between identification of language & thought & their segregation. Language provides names for thoughts that exist independently. The relationship between language & thought is a mechanical connection between 2 distinct processes.

E. Sapir: language is an outward facet of thought on the highest , most generalized level of symbolic expressions.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the language we speak determines what we can think. “Language acts as a polarizing lens on a camera in filtering reality – we see the world only in the categories of our language.” The Hopi language vs. standard European time, number & duration: english uses nouns to refer to phrases in a cycle of time, such as summer or morning. Hopi treats phrases as continung events. Words like “morning” are translated into Hopi as kinds of adverbs such as while morning phrase is occuring. English tenses divide time into 3 distinct units: present, past, future, whereas Hopi verbs do not indicate the time of an event as such, but rather focus on the manner of duration of the event.