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That is, it exchanges the part for the whole. The underlying assumption is that living mat- ter and sign matter converge. Therefore, from the perspective of global semiotics, semiosis that is, the rela- tion, or process or situation in which something is a sign and life converge given that semiosis is the criterial attribute of life. It follows that global semiotics also presents itself as a critique of semiotic theory and practice vitiated by oversimplifying anthropocentric and glottocentric tendencies.

Global semiotics extends its gaze well beyond the signs that human beings use to communicate — the subject matter of semiology as formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure — — and includes not only zoosemiotics term introduced by Sebeok3 , comprehensive of anthroposemiotics and the study of the signs of the other great kingdoms phytosemiotics and mycosemiotics , but also microsemiotics and endosemiotics.

As such global semiotics converges with biosemiotics. The subject matter of global semiotics or semiotics of life4 is the semiosphere conceived as converging with the biosphere. The term semiosphere is taken from the work of Juri Lotman — ,5 but is understood by Sebeok in a far broader sense.

Instead, taken in its totality, the semiosphere extends across the whole sign network that goes to form the living world. Considered in the context of global semiotics, general linguistics is part of anthroposemiotics. General linguistics studies verbal language, oral and written. However, it neither focuses on a given natural language Fr. Instead, general linguistics focuses on certain general aspects at times with claims to universality as they characteristi- cally present themselves in a given natural language, as the condition itself of its being a language. Modeling, Communication and Dialogue Now we shall explain two notions which are interconnected and fundamental in semiotics: Without them it is not possible to understand a third notion: This notion is generally privileged in the study of signs over the other two.

The concept of modeling comes from the so-called Tartu-Moscow school A. It is applied to natural language Fr. On the basis of research in biosemiotics, we know that the modeling capacity can be observed in all life-forms. It distinguishes between primary, secondary and tertiary modeling. The primary modeling system is not natural language Fr.

Instead, natural language Fr. Consequently, cultural sign systems that presuppose natu- ral languages are tertiary modeling systems. Secondary modeling subtends modeling processes of both the indicational and extensional types. Indicational modeling has been registered in various living spe- cies. Communication presupposes modeling, given that communication occurs inter- nally to a world produced by the modeling processes it presupposes. But communication always occurs on the basis of the type of modeling that characterizes a species. A Biosemiotic Perspective 51 is generally dialogic cf.

Furthermore, dialogue must be dis- tinguished from communication. Communication is only one aspect of semiosis. The other two are modeling and dialogism, as we have already stated. We will describe this condition more closely in the sections that follow. All the same, Sebeok uses such notions to explain the evolution of semiosis on the planet Earth. He resorts to them to explain the crucial difference between non-semiosic, quasi-semiosic or proto-semiosic phenomena relating to non-biological atomic interactions and inorganic molecules, on the one hand, and semiosis as the criterial attribute of life, on the other.

In any case, it is above all owing to the relation Cobley establishes with Th.

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These authors include Bakhtin, Driesch, J. On the relation among these authors, taken into consideration as part of a dialogue with ourselves lasting several years now , cf. Kull and Ponzio As regards the evolutionary process of semiosis, Sebeok implements information and semiosis to indicate two different evolutionary phases. Semiosis is what distin- guishes the animate from the inanimate. Before semiosis there was information. The essence of information is change; the prerequisite of semiosis is life. Information is possible without semiosis. But semiosis is not possible without information.

Semiosis and life include information, they imply it. It would seem so. As Sebeok observes, this is determined by the principle of articulation traceable in both language and the genetic code, that is, by the fact that both function on the basis of what he calls syntax, but which is better denominated syntactics. In the information-semiosic—semiotic and non- 21 Ibid. A Biosemiotic Perspective 53 life—life continuum likenesses like differences are qualitative and structural.

What counts is that these notions be functional to explaining the different aspects of information and of the semiosic and semiotic universe. For example, the concept of redundancy from information theory is valid both in lin- guistic studies of the utterance or text and in biosemiotic studies of the genetic code.

Binarism helps explain certain endosemiosis related phenomena the term endosemiotics was coined by Sebeok in as much as certain aspects of prop- erly human semiosis. From the point of view of global semiotics which aims not to neglect any sign phenomenon in the planetary biosphere, binarism cannot be excluded. Thibault in the Encyclopedia of Semiotics.

These two trends in semiotics would seem to converge with the opposition between binarism and triadism, respectively. However, we believe that the central question in semiotics considered on a theoretical level as well as from the point of view of the history of these two different trends, is not the opposition between binarism and triadism.

The categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness, the triad rep- resentamen, object and interpretant, the triadic tendency of signs in the direction of symbolicity, indexciality, and iconicity all contribute to delineating and supporting a conception of semiosis featuring otherness and dialogism.

Peircean logic is dialogic and polylogic. However, its merit does not lay in its tri- adic formula. Proof is Hegelian triadism which abstracts from the constitutive dialo- gism of life and gives rise to unilinear and monologic dialectics. Peirce him- self took a stand against the constitutive sclerosis of Hegelian dialectics which rather than remain open and contradictory presents itself as the expression of a hypochon- driac search for the conclusion, oriented unilaterally towards a synthesis.

Ponzio and ; Ponzio et al. A Biosemiotic Perspective 55 The alternative in semiotics is not between binarism and triadism, but between monologism and polylogism. The limit of the sign model proposed by Saussurean semiology is not determined by binarism as such, as claimed instead by Thibault.

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On the basis of more recent studies, the problem of the origin of verbal language has been reexamined and evidenced in all its complexity. Consequently, Sebeok intervened polemically and ironically on various occasions to cool down hot enthusiasm towards theories and training practices particularly fashionable at the time in the United States of America , which aimed to demonstrate that animals can speak.

Originally, language was not a communicative device. For an analysis of binarism in Saussure, cf. This book is now also available in English translation Ponzio are also endowed with a modeling system through which they produce their worlds; language is that which belongs to mankind. As the human species evolved, language also took on a communicative function through the process of exaptation an expression introduced by Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth S.

Vrba47 , thereby empowering the communicative function of speech; and speech also took on a mod- eling function thereby enhancing the modeling function of language, as it material- ized in each of the multiple natural languages: Speech developed from language-as-modeling as a result of the evolution of physical and neurological capacities, about , years ago.

Through a process of exaptation speech took on a modeling function in turn, thereby acting as a secondary modeling system. Such transforma- tion favored development of the human semiotic capacity on the cognitive, organi- zational, inventive levels, etc. All the same, absolute mutual comprehension remains a distant goal, so that the whole system still remains to be perfected.

We prefer the term procedure over system, recovered by Sebeok from the Tartu-Moscow school. All animals have construction models of the world and following Sebeok that belonging to the human animal is denominated language. However, language differs totally from modeling procedures in other animals.

What does not differ is the type of sign implemented icon, index, symbol, etc. The term articulation recalls decomposition into elements. Syntax projects the idea of the temporal-spatial distribution of these 50 Sebeok , pp. However, syntactics, a term introduced by Morris to denominate one of three branches of semiotics the other two being semantics and pragmatics , avoids confusing syntax in the linguistic-verbal sense with syntax in the sense of neoposi- tivist logic.

The term syntactics avoids the ambiguity connected with the word syn- tax, a term proper to linguists and neopositivists logical syntax in the formulation of Rudolf Carnap [—]. On our part, we prefer the term writing to syntactics. Writing thus described is antecedent to speech, the condition of possibility for speech.

The phonetic sign itself is writing given that it only functions on the basis of combination; writing belongs to language before the stylet or pen impresses letters on tablets or on pergamen or on paper, as Emmanuel Levinas — says. To signify by positioning the same things differently is already writing in itself. In other words, writing is inherent in language as a signifying procedure insofar as it is characterized by syntactics.

The phonetic sign itself is writing. Language was already writing, even before the invention of writing as transcription. The a priori is not speech. The a priori is language and its writing mechanism. The language of music articulates space-time thanks to language-as-modeling. Musical scores, like verbal language, are an expression of the human capacity for language, writing, articulation, ultimately for the properly human.

Natural language is a secondary modeling system whereas original language- as-modeling is a primary modeling system , and communication through natural language presupposes a particular modeling of the world.

But Chomsky lacks the concept of modeling. As such it is endowed with a phonological component, a syntactical component and a semantical compo- nent. But this grammar — unlike that of the natural languages — as described by Chomsky claims to be universal. The claim is that despite multiplicity and diversity all natural languages can be traced back to the innate structures of universal grammar.

Chomsky denies verbal language its communicative function. He isolates natural languages from their historical-social context nor is it incidental that he should deny sociolinguistics the status of science. Furthermore, he considers them inde- pendently from nonverbal languages, as though interpretation were possible uniquely through verbal signs, through renvoi from one verbal interpretant to another surface and deep structures.

Not making a distinction between language as primary modeling and verbal language natural language gives rise to forms of psychological reductionism as in the case of Philip Lieberman. On this account, complex anthropoge- netic processes are explained in terms of the linear development of given cognitive capacities. Moreover, all this is described in the language of traditional syntactics.

This is also true of communica- tion as conceived by information theory. Jakobson adds the important concept of function Prague linguistic circle. A Biosemiotic Perspective 61 Its development and functioning must be contextualized in the global sign network of human semiosis. Global semiosis is the condition of possibility for communica- tion in the restricted sense, that is, the exchange of messages.

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Thus described, com- munication in the human world converges with social reproduction, of which communicative exchange, that is, the exchange of messages and goods, constitutes only one aspect. Communication is the place where meanings, messages and experience, inten- tional acts including information transmission, are all formed. Reality, the way we perceive it, is organized and developed in the social processes of communication.

Instead, nonverbal sign behaviours do. As such, these sign behav- iours are posterior to verbal language speech , though they increase the interpretive and communicative possibilities of the latter. Moreover, this situation of multiplicity contradicts the uniqueness of the innate universal grammar hypothesis. Chomskyan linguistics neglects this type of multiplicity as well, given that it considers natural language lingua as a unique and unitary code. Plurilingualism does not only consist in the fact that verbal languages are mul- tiple and cannot be reconducted to a single univocal and omnicomprehensive sys- tem that can supplant them all, or that functions as a model to study, understand, characterize them in theoretical terms.

Plurilingualism involves relations of translation, but also of derivation and mutual completion. Moreover, the multiplicity of different languages shares in the common language of a given culture, etc. Work on internal and external plurilingualism in natural languages and on the relation between verbal and nonverbal signs is relatively recent. A Biosemiotic Perspective 63 systems generally, we wish to recall Bakhtin and Peirce.

Bakhtin addressed the question of polylogism and plurilingualism at a time in political-cultural history when a mechanistic and monolinguistic view of the world prevailed, the Stalinist. Signs as such must necessarily relate to other signs that interpret them and determine their meaning at each occurrence in dynamical and open relations, of the endolingual and interlingual orders.

In Italy, Giacomo Leopardi — was aware early-on of the essential nature of plurilingual- ism, at the time perhaps him alone, and not only in Italy, with respect to his time. Leopardi takes his distance from those philosophical-linguistic tendencies that, to echo Bakhtin,66 only know two poles in linguistic life between which all linguistic phenomena are forcefully organized: If plurilingualism is given naturally so to say — though it may be stronger or weaker depending on the historical-cultural situation —, this means that it is a feature of linguistic life that cannot be refrained, one we can actively intervene upon to favour transformation of plurilingualism into dialogized pluridiscursivity.

This is the condition of possibility for speech to be able to take its distances from a given language and achieve a metalinguistic and critical awareness of them. Just over a hundred or so of the total are languages accompanied by writing transcription systems. According to this myth, the happy original world, a world that human beings slowly lost featured uniqueness and linguistic univocality. All the same God punishes by raising the bet what sort of a God would he be otherwise?

God humiliates by giving. Plurilingualism is a gift, even if often mis- understood. This means that encounter among different languages does not effectively occur. In reality, monolingualism, which is also monolo- gism, is but one aspect of a totalitarian attitude towards pluralism and differences, made to pass as a necessary condition for living together. Plurilingualism and polylogism — like plurivocality, ambiguity, vagueness —, rather than a punishment, a malediction, a fall from a condition of original happi- ness, are fundamental conditions, indeed irrevocable for communication, expres- sion and understanding.

Why many languages and not one only? The concept of innate grammati- cal structures also prevents an adequate understanding of the creative character of language. Indeed, a given natural language is constituted and develops as a function of this possibility.



Instead of 72 Chomsky Ponzio uttering the same reality, verbal language tends to take its distances from it by pro- ducing other meanings, other modalities of saying, by uttering another reality. To know another natural language, in fact, does not only serve to supercede barriers of a communicative order, but also of the cognitive, critical, ideological, inventive, emotional orders, etc. This last aspect should not be underestimated when it is a question of motivating foreign language learning.

In fact, the search for new experiences, the desire to perceive new sensations, to experiment the body and savour the exotic are certainly more attractive than the drudgery of training to use a given means to satisfy given ends, in this case, the need to communicate which is the motivation generally proposed to promote the study of foreign languages.

Every natural language gives a particu- lar form to this purport, like sand, as Hjelmslev says, which takes the shape of its container. This is what Sebeok calls secondary modeling. Ponzio just as the continuum of the colours of the solar spectrum is divided differently, for example, in English and Welsh. Thanks to linguistic work as deposited in different historical-languages, the same material can be formed or restructured differently in different languages like sand put into differ- ent shapes or clouds taking different forms, as Hjelmslev claims.

All the same, however, it always gives itself as signified; it obeys a form and presents itself as substance. Creativity in verbal lan- guage and the capacity to be freed of the communicative function is determined by the fact that verbal language is grounded in language-as-modeling, which has no limits on the capacity for innovation and inventiveness.

Similarly, that writing can get free of its mnemotechnic function which consists in transcribing verbal oral language and present itself as creative writing is possible for the same reason. Semiotics thus understood alludes to the universal propensity of the human mind, as Sebeok claims, for reverie focused on its long-term cognitive strategies and daily maneuverings.

A Biosemiotic Perspective 69 Verbal language plays a fundamental role in all this. It provides the form through which consciousness and thought exist and take shape, but it is not the origin. At the same time, however, language as pre-verbal modeling subtends the manip- ulative activity of verbal and nonverbal languages. And while they presuppose language as primary modeling, the central element of such transforma- tion is the human body. The human body is the primary material of manipulative material and sign mate- rial: Moreover, the instruments used for work represent an extension on the human body [Leib].

In any case, meaning is distinguished from concept. The interpretive itinerary that goes to form meaning converges in part with the class that forms the concept. The two things, like the interpretant formed by the action of opening the door, are on the same interpretive route, but they do not enter the same logical class and do not form a concept.

Therefore, meaning and concept are closely connected. Every meaning expresses a concept and, vice versa, every concept requires a meaning, that is, an interpretive route. All the same, however, meaning and concept must be kept distinct. The concept is a class of objects which may or may not be grouped together in subclasses, and the 84 Rossi-Landi [, p. Rossi-Landi [, pp. Ponzio class may eventually enter a larger class. Meaning is an interpretive route formed of connections among signs, of deferrals from interpretant to interpretant.

Utterance and Answering Comprehension Until it deals exclusively with the elements of natural language and the sentence, linguistics cannot account for answering comprehension. Instead, answering com- prehension or if we prefer, responsive understanding is connected with the utter- ance, intertextuality and dialogue. Quietude is the condition for perceiving sounds and identifying verbal signs. Quietude is the con- dition for perceiving sound and the distinguishing features of language; for identify- ing the repeatable elements of language, those belonging to the system of language on the phonological, syntactical and semantical levels.

Instead, silence is the condi- tion for understanding the sense of the utterance, sense in its unrepeatability; silence is the condition for response to the utterance in its singularity. Silence is associated with the utterance and with sense, with the social-historical materiality of the sign. Whilst quietude is an expression of the logic of identity, silence is associated with high degrees of alterity and as such is an expression of the properly human.

In terms of interpretive capacity it is associated with respon- sive understanding and responsible engagement. According to this analysis qui- etude is associated with signality and silence with semioticity. We are alluding here to the tendency to neglect the relation of answering comprehension or responsive understanding among utterances, their sense.

A Biosemiotic Perspective 71 It ensues that neither taxonomical linguistics nor generative linguistics have any- thing interesting to say about the utterance as the live cell of discourse, about its dialogical character, its essential vocation for answering comprehension. Encounter, mutual methodological and terminological exchange between lin- guistics of the sentence, on the one hand, and mathematical information theory, on the other, is not incidental.

The denomination itself of code linguistics derives from this exchange. Once the utterance is reduced to the relation between code and message, proper to the signal, noise is connected to some imperfection in the channel, to interference from the external context, or to lack of rules that restrict the relation between message and code and consequently allow for ambiguity. In any case, noise thus described is connected with quietude, the condition for perception of the signal. The background from which dialogical relations emerge is silence.

Silence is both the situation or position the utterance begins from and the situa- tion or position it is received in. Ponzio involves the violation of silence and not simply violation of quietude; at the same time, it presupposes silence as a listening position. Between emitter silence and receiver silence there is no substantial difference: Vice versa, silence as a listening position is the start- ing point for interpretation of the answering comprehension order, the beginning of a response in the form of an utterance when the responsive interpretant is of the verbal type.

The utterance turns to the silence of responsive listening. Once the silence of responsive listening is eliminated, what remains is quietude. Obviously the utterance does not address quietude, on the contrary it withdraws from it. Quietude imposes speaking, but not listening. Insofar as it is responsive listening, silence is a pause in the unrepeatable utterance. Code linguistics is the expression of the centripetal forces of the social.

The linguistics of quietude is simply an expression of this state of affairs. Homologation of the communicative universe reduces listening to wanting to hear. It limits the spaces of silence where freedom to listen is as necessary as free- dom of the word. Consequently, due to such homologation processes the communi- cative universe ends by investing the verbal sign solely with the conventional characteristics of the signal or the natural characteristics of sound. From necessity of the natural to repetition of the conventional, or to say it with Peirce, from indexicality to symbolicity: Peirce attributes such charac- teristics to iconicity.

Quietude renders the sign mechanical and natural, making it oscillate between the conventional character of the signal and the natural character of sound, the natural character of that which does not make claims to sense. A linguistic theory capable of accounting for the universe of language, expres- sion and communication must be explicative and critical, well beyond the limits of a descriptive and taxonomic approach to language analysis. A global approach to communication in the human world must account for the social processes of linguis- tic production in relation to a critical theory of ideology.

The linguistics of silence is oriented as listening, therefore it focuses on language oriented in the direction of dialogic heteroglossia, plurilingualism internal and external to the same natural lan- guage and answering comprehension, which also account for the human capacity for critique and creativity. The problem of speech genres. In Bakhtin , pp. The problem of the text. From notes made in — Speech genres and other late essays. Austin University of Texas Press.

A brief note on dialogue. Vico, metaphor and the origin of language. The primary modeling system in animals. Origini e natura del linguaggio. Einaudi [English translation and introduc- tion by Petrilli, S. Origins and nature of language. Agapastic exploration of the biosphere: Exaptation — A missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8 1 , 4— Prolegomena to a theory of language. University of Wiscontin Press. On the origins and foundations of inequalities among speakers. Daedalus, 3 , 59— Quest for the essence of language. Diogenes, 13 51 , 21— In Posner, Robering, Sebeok Eds.

Le langage, cet inconnu. On the sphere of understanding: A note on Driesch. On the origins of language. Universe of the mind. Johns Hopkins University Press. Greimas and his school. Sign systems and semioethics. Communication, translation and values. Thomas Sebeok and the signs of life. I segni e la vita. La semiotica globale di Thomas A. Sign vehicles for semiotic travels: A Biosemiotic Perspective 75 Petrilli, S. Interpretive routes through the open net- work of signs. From global semiotics to semioethics, a dialogic response.

Semiotics between Peirce and Bakhtin. Man as a sign. Signs, dialogue and ideology. John Benjamins [edited and translated from Italian by S. Il linguaggio e le lingue. O outro no discurso. Michail Bachtin e il suo circolo. Fondamenti di filosofia del linguaggio. Il linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato. Metodica filosofica e scienza dei segni. Semiotics in the USSR. Communication among social bees. Harvard University Press; 2. University of Chicago Press; 3. Language, 39 3 July—September , — Contributions to the doctrine of signs.

The University of Texas Press. The play of musement. I think I am a verb.

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More contributions to the doctrine of signs. A sign is just a sign. An introduction to semiotics. The forms of meaning. Modelling systems theory and semiot- ics. Aspects of language and translation. However, by committing what I term the anthropocentric mistake, i. Like Sebeok and Hoffmeyer I hold that language is a modeling system, but unlike them I argue that language is not external to the Umwelt, but internal to it. Language changes the human Umwelt not by escaping or sidelining it, but by fundamentally transforming it.

In consequence supra-linguistic phenomena as well are modeled as internal to the human Umwelt. The Umwelt model presented is termed the tripartite Umwelt model, and includes three aspects of Umwelt: The activity of languaging is presented as more-than-linguistic, with reference to the distributed language perspective. Given all the dark matter underpinning and surrounding verbal practices, a foray into the hinterland of language is called for. A section on the genesis and modalities of language addresses the origin and evolution of language, acquisition of language in childhood and a simple typology of the various linguistic modalities of the human Umwelt.

He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire. To most people, language largely constitutes reality. And yet language is free to evolve at the inkling of an eye or by the hunch of a confused mind. Without a doubt, language does in many senses open the world up to us — but it also conditions and constrains us. This reminder is no less important given the implicit topic matter of this text, subjective experience. By objectifying subjective phenomena, and describing them in scholarly language, we convert them into another genre, and consequently a differ- ent mode of being — and this scholarly mode of being is not in all respects true and faithful to the phenomena.

Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. But what must one think? Why is he starving me? What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought — for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor? The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?

But if the topic is humans, whose language we understand and whose utterances resem- ble our own — then we are capable of providing part of the drives with sensory content that makes psychological understanding possible. Language, then, is intimately tied to perception — language frames perception, and simultaneously language is grounded in core perception — and, indeed, in a sense language is perception as scholars within ecological linguis- tics freely admit, language is a perception system.

Sebeok and Hoffmeyer both see language as transcending the human Umwelt. This was because it had a central position in culture, and so, any secondary modeling system was supra-linguistic or, in other terms, language-derived. While Sebeok positions the Umwelt as fundamental, he simulta- neously positions language as external to it. Conceptual Umwelt objects are in the lat- ter case Umwelt objects whose functional meaning is imprinted linguistically. But as we have seen, both Sebeok and Hoffmeyer think of human language as being external to the human Umwelt.

In my perspective, human language is a special case of more widespread systems of pred- icative reasoning, and enmeshed in the Umwelt that is our lifeworld, our phenome- nal world. Language is internal to the Umwelt, i. This situates the Umwelt as a rich notion capable of serving as theoreti- cal and methodological foundation for studies of the world of the living and the world of human affairs alike for example, the tripartite model of the Umwelt may be applied as an ethogram in ethology, or for similar mapping purposes in ethno- graphic work.

This concerns language-derived practices and far more. Taking one step back, I will now explain what I mean by predicative reasoning, or the criterion for being endowed with a conceptual Umwelt. They thereby exercise a capacity which is indicative of rational judgment, and thus proto-linguistic capacities. This holds true even for proto- language in form of predicative reasoning, which must be assumed to be quite wide- spread among animals. These animals, too, have cognitive modelling capabilities that go well beyond the work performed by the core Umwelt, which is based in automated perceptual acts.

But some animals participate in human language. Animals that recognize, under- stand and act on a number of human words arguably have conceptual Umwelten that envelop elements of language this rests on the assumption that they actually under- stand words as words. Hodges strikingly observes that languaging binds us together and empowers us: Core Umwelt Automated acts of perception Automated mental acts 27 Westling , pp. But the distinctions implied are crucial: These do not have any conceptual Umwelt, their Umwelten consist only of two aspects, the core aspect and the mediated aspect.

Here, language is implicitly said to be habitual. This is not to be associated with behaviourist language acquisition theories based on the work of, for instance, Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Language acquisition, therefore, is extensively based on interpretation as well as on social expectations. Moreover, the characterization of language as habitual is not only relevant for lan- guage acquisition, but just as much for adult, mature language practices at large.

We now see, for one thing, that it must also be distinguished from wilful acts of perception. In general terms automated acts can be said to be code-based, whereas both wilful acts and habitual acts are interpretation-based. If this is correct, the interpretive threshold is not located where animals with a nervous system meet creatures without a nervous system, as Barbieri holds, nor where the biotic meets the abiotic, as Hoffmeyer holds. Instead, it is, kalevi. As Martin Neumann and at least in our context, located where core experience meets mediated experience and since these aspects often intermingle, the dividing line is not in plain sight.

As we orient to circumstances, and each other, we give a particular sense to the vagueness of verbal language. Interactivity points us further, to the notion of enkinaesthesia, coined by philoso- pher Susan Stuart. Enkinaesthesia, like intersubjectivity and intercorporeality relates to notions of affect, but in this case it is with 42 Neumann and Cowley Enkinaesthesia arguably makes us human — and, indeed, animal. The Anthropocentric Mistake Identity is an intriguing thing. It is so obvious to us, who we are — or so it appears.

Human identity is largely a linguistic phenomenon. Man is not a sign. Man is not language. Man is not simply what it thinks it is Man is not identity. Rather, Man is a creature who organizes ecological reality in lin- guistic categories — both perceptually and behaviourally. It is very commonplace, therefore, to commit the anthropocentric mistake, namely to reason erroneously that human reality is practically all there is. We tend to think in terms of language, and in terms of language, all is language. All is human language — therefore all is human.

What we do not realize when committing this mistake is that it is not only Man who judges, who categorizes, who organizes, who is different, and so forth. The anthropocentric — or indeed linguistic — mistake, then, consists in mistaking human reality for reality as such. To put it bluntly, current mainstream views on language which are aligned with the anthropocentric mistake result in a string of distorted realities.

As a result, philosophy of conscious- ness, phenomenology, epistemology and philosophy of science, ontology, ethics and aesthetics all underachieve in comparison with their innate potential. In this sense the phenom- enon of enkinaesthesia does not lack a normative dimension. This is described as taking a language stance. As we have seen, language is a powerful framer of behavior and of perception. As languag- ing and human practices develop, so do our respective Umwelten. What is gained in this process, and what is lost?

What is certain is that nowadays language, language- derived practices and various media playing into our mediated Umwelten are becoming ever more dominant. What then of our actual encounters with other living beings? If reality as we perceive it is consistently linguistic, then what role do we have to assign to non-human nature? And of course, any human doing is furthermore underpinned by an array of intercellular and ecological activities. We are just not always aware that this is the case — it belongs to the untold, the unseen which nev- ertheless sustains our conversations and our thoughts, our doings and our deeds.

The Cultural Tool, Daniel L. Therefore a full transcription of an everyday conversation will not spell out all there is to say about what two or more people have just talked about. What two persons both take for granted may be treated as given, when they speak. And it does indeed appear to be the case that volatile conversations are often characterized by uncertainty about what the other person is taking for granted. How can we escape having a tunnel vision of language seeing only what is in plain sight? How do we contribute to shaping our own Umwelten in a healthy, sustainable, ecologically grounded manner?

How can we co-create Umwelten that we are not all too ashamed to pass on to our children? We may have to reeducate ourselves. Learn how to see again. Best of luck on that journey! The Genesis and Modalities of Language We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. Camus [, p. In the history of life in general, the core Umwelt is without doubt the initial Umwelt.

It is equally clear that the next layer to emerge must have been the mediated Umwelt, followed by the conceptual Umwelt as the latest and most advanced aspect of Umwelt. But humankind must have had all three aspects of Umwelt from the outset, and several animal species likewise. So if we were to portray the Umwelt trajectory of humankind in these terms, we would have to go very far back in our pre-human evolutionary history.

A macro-evolutionary event that is more characteristic of human existence is the emergence of languaging practices followed, later on, by literacy. Noam Chomsky is among those who argue that the transition must have been sharp. The modelling capabilities involved in predicative reasoning were arguably there for hundreds of millions but not billions of years before language evolved. This sug- gests that human language is a later, more commanding derivative of such capabili- ties.

Just like predicative reasoning does for any animal endowed with it, language affords the human organism with the capacity to organise its Umwelt objects and factors more meticiously. Acquisition of Language in Childhood Besides Umwelt trajectories, the evolution and development of language can also be depicted in terms of an Umwelt transition,76 i. A human child arguably goes through several Umwelt transitions, or a very multifac- eted one, as it learns to language.

The Various Linguistic Modalities of the Human Umwelt In point 4 of the platform for a semiotics of being,79 I refer to speechless Umwelten, spoken Umwelten and alphabetic Umwelten as distinct categories of human Umwelten. Additionally, there are situations — states of mind — where we so to speak loose or deliberately pause our ability to speak, or to perceive in terms of language. These are border cases of the speechless and the spoken, some of them bordering on insanity. Beyond the Anthropocentric Mistake: Unfortunately, semiotics appears to have overlooked this dark side of semiotic relations, as is evident from the lack of a conceptual framework and studies dedicated to this topic.

First, because when languages are going extinct, semiocide occurs and, second, because language can make us blind to the ongoing non-linguistic semiocide. The way we language around for example animals is telling of our relationship towards them. This chapter ends with three theses on the ethos of human-animal relations, which have implications for ethics, ontology and epistemology: Language and languaging largely originated in human-animal co-action. Language did not emerge in a merely human setting. In the modern era many people are inexperienced with regard to traditional human-animal encounters and thus alienated with regard to nature.

Thanks also to Paul Thibault and Stephen Cowley, for very stimulating discussions on the nature of language, cognition, human interactivity, agency, modern pitfalls etc. This work has been car- ried out thanks to the support of the research project Animals in Changing Environments: The spell of the sensuous.

Perception and language in a more-than-human world. What connects biolinguistics and biosemiotics? Biology, linguistics, and the semiotic perspective on language. Organic codes and the natural history of mind. Organic codes and the origin of language. Steps to an ecology of mind. The myth of Sisyphus and other essays. Semioticians make strange bedfellows! Biosemiotics, 2 , — Some simple Evo Devo theses: How true might they be for language?

The lives of animals. Taking a language stance. Ecological Psychology, 23, 1— Cognition beyond the brain. Proceedings of the humanities international forum. Russian State University for the Humanities. Implications for language and cognition. Paper presented at the workshop agency in health care: Phenomenology and experience, University of Stavanger, 15th April Language Sciences, 41 A , 60— New perspectives on anthropo- morphism. From being and time to the task of thinking pp.

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Ecological and social perspectives on conforming, creat- ing, and caring in conversation. Language Sciences, 29, — The origin of geometry. Husserl, The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy pp. What do fossils, genetics, and archeology say? Language Sciences, 26, — Enchantment of the past and semiocide.

Sign Systems Studies, 41 1 , — Introduction to a metaphysic of hope. Readers of the book of life: Contextualizing developmental evolutionary biol- ogy. Human agency and the resources of reason. Computation, interactivity and human artifice pp. Eesti Loodus, 11, 24— Nature in our memory. Sign Systems Studies, 41 1 , — [translation of Puura by E. The status of linguistics as a science. University of California Press. Toward a natural history of language.

Semiotica, 65 3—4 , — The forms of meaning: Modeling systems theory and semiotic analysis. Problem-solving, solution-probing, and verbal pat- terns in the wild. Interactivity and human thinking pp. Portuguese Catholic University Press. Discourse, ecology, and reconnection with the natural world. Enkinaesthesia, biosemiotics, and the ethiosphere.

A Glorious Accident (6 of 7) Stephen Jay Gould: The Unanswerable

The dialogical integration of the brain in social semiosis: Edelman and the case for downward causation. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7 4 , — First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: The distributed language view. Ecological Psychology, 23 3 , — The child in America: Behavior problems and programs. Sign Systems Studies, 31 1 , — Biosemiotics, 2 1 , 47— Steps to a semiotics of being. Biosemiotics, 3 3 , — The ecology of existence. Darwin und die Englische Moral. Deutsche Rundschau, , — Theoretische Biologie 2nd ed.

Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten. A foray into the worlds of animals and humans with a theory of meaning. Darwin and the English morality. The zoosemiotics of sheep herding with dogs. Structural-typological study of semiotic modeling systems. Evidence for Semiotic Foundations Jamin Pelkey Abstract Language varieties undergo constant evolution, as do varieties of life. Both language and life unfold by semiosis — pervasive processes of growth in which relationships shared between the inherited past, the unstable present and the virtual future are organically intertwined.

Although many recent attempts have been made to reunite biotic and linguistic evolution, contemporary treatments are mired in unexamined presuppositions inherited from twentieth century biological theory. After reviewing the history and prob- lems of dialogue between linguistics and biology, I make two primary arguments in this essay, one a critique using historical evidence, the other a suggestion using empirical evidence. My critical argument is that crucial features of semiosis are missing from contemporary linguistic-biotic proposals.

Entangled with these miss- ing accounts is an analogous form of neglect, or normative blindness, apparent in both disciplines: The paper ends with an application involving complex correspondence patterns in the Muji language varieties of China followed by an appeal for a radically evolutionary approach to the nature of language s in general, an approach that not only encompasses both linguistic and biotic growth but is also process-explicit. I am grateful to the editors of this volume for their invaluable criticism and suggestions that led to a more accurate and intelligible presentation of the paper argument.

Remaining infelicities or errors are due to my own limitations. Recent studies2 demonstrate that this hiatus was temporary. Widespread disagreement on the nature, scope and applicability of biological models to linguistic and cultural change mark the current state of the dialogue cf. Some theorists promote widely diver- gent biological analogies for linguistic phenomena. As I have argued elsewhere,5 an architectonic system is needed that is capable of making the nature of domain-general evolution explicit.

In other words, a model that embraces semiosis is required. With these issues in mind, I make two primary arguments in this essay, one a critique using historical evidence, the other a suggestion using empirical evidence. My critical argument cf. In contrast to mainstream accounts of evolution, this account develops an emerging Biosemiotic mandate by insisting that any theory of evolution should be grounded in explicit discussion of the nature of process.

Firstly, it will be helpful to consider the interdependent development of the biological and linguistic sciences in the late classical and romantic periods of Anglo-European thought. Pelkey late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century. During this time, the interplay between botany and philology was especially rich, but when it came to rigorous inquiry into the nature of patterned growth through space and time, philology clearly led the way from the s to the s. Challenges Facing Evolutionary Linguistics Twentieth century approaches to language and linguistics enforced and, indeed, invented various ahistorical synchronic analyses of linguistic data.

Although phylogenetic methods and concepts of heredity originated in eigh- teenth and nineteenth century historical linguistics,28 philologists appear to have been distracted by the progressive Hegelianism of the day into thinking of lan- guages as existing along a continuum from decay to improvement, to perfection. Since we now assume biology to be the proper arena for evolution and language to be the special charge of the human and social sciences, insofar as the two may intersect, language is generally treated as proceeding from neo-Darwinian modes of genetic evolution.

These are the focuses 25 Mufwene , pp. Although such assumptions may some- times be useful for understanding the nature of language, they also tend to distract from inquiry into language as a process i. In the bio- linguistic school, language evolution is generally understood to mean the evolution of a presumed language faculty, not language as a mode of evolution.

Of those who pursue the quest to understand language as a process, most default to various presuppositional traps, as I demonstrate further below. In short, cultural assump- tions still largely ensure that evolutionary analogies must be drawn from the estab- lished categories and methods of contemporary Biology. Biological Analogies Gone Wild Numerous parallels have been drawn between linguistic and biological phenomena. Table 1 Conceptual parallels between biological and linguistic evolution Atkinson and Gray , p.

For others, language is a parasite38; for others still, language is a virus. What is more, some language theorists mix and match biological analogies at so many different levels that we are left with no clear theory of how these analogies function togeth- er. What is required is a generalized theory of evolutionary change that subsumes biological evolution, language change, and other phenomena of evolutionary change such as cultural evolution.

Croft appeals to David L. It is at this crux that biosemiotic perspectives may well be indispensable for progress. And yet the latter position is the current mainstream consensus. Since the pervasive role of function requires a teleological level of causation to be re-admitted to the natural and social 47 Mesoudi et al. Sebeok ; Hoffmeyer Three features of Darwinian evolution, for instance, are widely discussed as domain-general: Unless these aspects of evolution are examined at a presuppositional level, they are unlikely to be freed from the Neo- Darwinian assumptions of those who apply them.

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