摘要
In the manuscript of the 1903 Syllabus intended to accompany his Lowell lectures on logic,Peirce developed what is one of his best-known semiotic constructions,namely a ten-class,three-division typology of signs.The nine subdivisions in the typology define,amongst others,the icon-index-symbol division much used in visual semiotics and even in competing theories of the sign,and were based upon the three phenomenological categories as Peirce conceived them at the time.However,within five years he had developed a different ten-class typology left as a scrap of information in a post-scriptum to a draft letter intended for,but never sent to,Lady Welby.Now,this new typology was established following a period in which Peirce’s thinking on signs had undergone considerable developments;it was underwritten by a different set of theoretical choices from which it was impossible to construct the earlier icon-index-symbol division.The paper seeks to tease out the differences between the two typologies,the interpretation of the latter presenting Peirce scholars with an interesting theoretical challenge.After summarising the 1903 system for purposes of comparison,the paper examines the theoretical developments leading to the 1908 post-scriptum typology,establishes the ten classes it yields and attempts to illustrate some of them.The two ten-class taxonomies show in a striking manner how significantly Peirce’s criteria for the classification of signs developed in the five years between the Syllabus and the draft post-scriptum.It is to be hoped that this will contribute to our understanding of how Peirce came later to conceive the sign and the way it functions.
