The Representation of Semiotic Structures in Language

Abstract

Based on previous published work on (Mandarin) Chinese, and following a discussion of the properties of the Peircean ontological Categories Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (as well as their "degenerate" or derivative versions) and their applicability to sign systems, in general, I examine evidence for paradigmatic and syntagmatic structuring, conditioned by these Categories, in Mandarin Chinese, Sora, Tamil, and Sanskrit, languages chosen because of the typological divergence amongst them, and because of the author's familiarity with them and with their respective cultural milieus. The paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures identified arise in the presence of what I term positive and negative conditioning constraints arising from the Categories themselves, and which are shown to operate at three different levels in language, the morphosyntactic, the lexical, and the phonological. Because of this, a methodology grounded in Peircean semiotic structures is shown to have the explanatory potential to allow for a unified model of language structure, in general.