The study of language is based either on the word or on the sentence as basic units.Ferdinand de Saussure opted for the word;other linguists later preferred the sentence or chose to ignore the difference between word ...The study of language is based either on the word or on the sentence as basic units.Ferdinand de Saussure opted for the word;other linguists later preferred the sentence or chose to ignore the difference between word and sentence.Words,however,have extra-linguistic functions related to the topologies of thought,the spontaneous geometrical imageries of meaningful mental figuration,as we know them from sign posts,from verbal descriptions,and from the semiotics of diagrams.If words,rather than sentences,are in this sense the essential connectors of language and thought,then the general architecture of linguistic structures,including semantics and syntax,should be centered around this lexical“window”into the thinking mind,and the semiotic modes of language and signs may then be described by similar architectures directly connected to the figurative mind itself.This paper offers tentative connected models of the architectures of language,signs,and the figurative mind,and suggests the possibility of interpreting Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiological intuitions in the sense of a semiotics of the mind along these cognitive-semiotic lines.展开更多
文摘The study of language is based either on the word or on the sentence as basic units.Ferdinand de Saussure opted for the word;other linguists later preferred the sentence or chose to ignore the difference between word and sentence.Words,however,have extra-linguistic functions related to the topologies of thought,the spontaneous geometrical imageries of meaningful mental figuration,as we know them from sign posts,from verbal descriptions,and from the semiotics of diagrams.If words,rather than sentences,are in this sense the essential connectors of language and thought,then the general architecture of linguistic structures,including semantics and syntax,should be centered around this lexical“window”into the thinking mind,and the semiotic modes of language and signs may then be described by similar architectures directly connected to the figurative mind itself.This paper offers tentative connected models of the architectures of language,signs,and the figurative mind,and suggests the possibility of interpreting Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiological intuitions in the sense of a semiotics of the mind along these cognitive-semiotic lines.
