What is a sign?
Everybody knows what a sign is, and has no difficulty to
use this word. It is not so easy to explain it. A wet ground may be the sign
that rain has fallen. Rain falling may be as well the sign that ground is wet.
This example show that a sign, the meaning of a sign, has some relationship with
causality, but, by contrast with causality, it works the two ways. If,
obviously, rain can be the cause of the wet ground, wet ground can't absolutely
be the cause of the rain, however, it may be a sign for it.
Signs allow
us, then, to browse through causal chains, and so to anticipate them.
Notion of meaning system
There are many definitions of the word "sign" corresponding
to different disciplines, but I prefer to let it remaining the most usual and
general meaning.
A cloud may be sign for rain. It is a sign only for who
interprets it as a one, that it would be true or wrong. By itself, the cloud may
be nothing more than a cause.
The cloud which one is a sign for me may be
a one for another. I show him the cloud and, even if he doesn't know my
language, he walks faster, that is a sign for me he made the same
interpretation. In this example, there is no agreement according to any
convention. A pragmatic relationship with facts is enough. The meaning system is
wholly supported by the actual climatic system.
No meaning system,
probably, as sophisticated as it may be, could emancipate itself from such a
pragmatic relationship with facts. For example, the word "cloud" lets me evoke
the cloud even when I have no one to show; however, I must be able, as my
interlocutor, to see a sign in the actual cloud in order to let my sentence
provide a meaning.
I might tell somebody: "look at the clouds", and he
might answer me "what about?"
I could explain him that those clouds mean
that rain is coming, but he might shrug his shoulders, or do something like
that, and mind I joke or relate to some superstition.
May we conclude
that he understands me better than if he wouldn't know my language, and would
walk faster as soon as he should glance at the sky?
Scales and the
concept of weight are another example. How could we conceive what a weight is,
without having discovered the lever and its specific application that is the
scales? What would be the meaning of weight otherwise?
What a
language is.
A language is a system of signs. This systematic
aspect is important, and is specially pregnant with the function of
communication. So, man often concludes that communication is the main function
of language. I rather mind that communication is not a function of its own, but
its condition.
In my example, the cloud is for me a sign of the rain,
even if I am alone and if I don't communicate with anybody. The climate is
itself systematic enough. What is the matter if what is a sign for me is not a
one for another? The coming or not of the rain is already an answer. The
pragmatic relationship that signs manage with facts is widely able to provide
answers, feed back, without having to suppose any interlocutor nor message.
I pierce holes in a reed, and I play notes. I can establish a
systematic relationship between the distances separating the holes, their
physical characters in general, and the eight of a sound. To do that, I need
nobody.
It is only when such relationships are perceived, created,
discovered, invented... that a communication between interlocutors can occur and
be conceived. The systematic nature of signs articulation in a language is soon
widely maintained by the systematic articulation of facts in actuality.
Agreements with common conventions are less needed than man often minds. For
example, the number of days in a year is not given by convention.
Then,
communication would be rather a cooperation in order to build such systems.
Their construction would not be conceivable without cooperation.
What natural languages are?
Natural languages are
specific forms of languages, composed with some dozens of signs, according to a
principle of dual articulation.
What is a dual articulation? Signs
that compose the system have no meaning by themselves, they constitute a first
level, which are the phonemes, with which we build the signs of a second one,
and by means of which we set up sentences providing meanings.
A natural
language has generally a sound form and a graphic one. We can imagine some
others, tactile for example, as the writing for the blind, or knots on ropes, as
used by ancient civilizations. In the first case, signs of first level are
phonemes, in the second, they are letters.
These two sets of first level
signs may be equivalent. In Arabic, phonemes and letters are scarcely the same.
In French, the 26 letters (to which special characters must be added) correspond
to 36 phonemes, which may need two or three letters, and may be written
differently (o, au, eau...)
In fact, we have a dually dual
articulation: a former, between two levels of signs, the ones used to compose
the others, and another, between a phonetic structure and a graphic one.
"Language" comes from the Latin word "lingua", which means "tongue", that
lets us mind that it is phonetic before being writing. Many people can speak
without being able to write, and not the contrary. However, writing is not only
the graphic transposition of sound signs. Conversion obviousness and easiness
hint that language is somehow independent of what kind of signs it uses. This
easiness is moreover relative. We are sometimes in pain when we try to render in
writing the resources handled by speech, or the opposite. How to write the
kindness of a tone? How to pronounce italics? |