Introduction. Crossing borderlines

Appears in _Co-operative Engagements of Intertwined Semiosis: Essays in Honour of Charles Goodwin_, Edited by Donald Favareau, 2018 University of Tartu Press. This essay was written in 2003 for a book that never materialized and has not been revised, apart from updating a few references and correcting typos, for the present volume. Chuck’s influence is obvious, I think, throughout. Even the framing comparison of Saussure and Wittgenstein owes much to the many conversations I had with Chuck during the time I was a visiting assistant professor at UCLA (1997–1998). Sitting in Chuck’s study, looking at data with him and trying to absorb some of his genius as he made one brilliant observation after another is a memory I hold close to my heart. Chuck’s enthusiasm for this work has always been infectious but his kind-heartedness and his generosity of spirit, his sparkling sense of humour and his stories are what I treasure most.

Tartu : Tartu University Press eBooks, 1998

Peeter Torop semiotic means for interpreting Estonian culture. We are academic persons with different interests, and we have chosen semiotics for realising our creative potential, every one of us in a different way. We are not a group subordinated to the loyalty to only one school. We have come from a totalitarian society whose isolating influence can still be felt sometimes. But we are free in our choices. Semioticians are not practising a forbidden esoteric doctrine any more. They are ordinary scholars, and as scholars, they can develop through contacts with colleagues. Here the assistance we have received from T. Sebeok and J. Bernard, from S. Nekljudov, V. Toporov and B. Uspenski is invaluable. We are also grateful to our colleagues from Finland, Sweden and Denmark as well as from Spain and Italy for their help. We thank all of them and hope that Tartu and the series of Sign System Studies will become again a meeting-place where one would like to return-to this place, to this edition. So that we could say with complete confidence: once upon the time there were semioticians. And they live happily ever after. In Tartu as well. 26 Thomas A. Sebeok University. Jean and I kept conversation to a minimum during drive. We mostly dozed.4 At this point, it is necessary to mention that, during our entire s ay in Estonia, and a fortiori in Tartu, neither of us took any notes, et alone photographs. My report of this crowded, exciting day may therefore contain some misapprehensions. Take, for example, the composition of the impressive gathering that greeted us on our arrival outside the gate: there were, to my best recollection, over twenty men and women there, only a few of whom I had met before, swarming around us, introducing themselves. I transcribed their names from memory several days later on the ship returning us to Finland. Here is what I do remember. The very first colleague to come forward to greet me was Petr Bogatyrev, who seemed by far the most senior personage present and who was introduced, for the record (I guessed), as being the "President" of the School5. Next, Lotman was introduced as the "Secretary" of the School, and he in turn presented us to his wife, Zara Mine6. I was then informed that D. M. Segal would be my interpreter for the day, and he was thereafter at my side until our departure. To the best of my recollection, the following individuals were also in the group: Т.

The sign has been known and studied for thousands of years. It is viewed here as a phenomenon that is common to both animals and humans. It is the basic building block for both animal and human communication systems. Therefore, to understand how human communication works, one needs to begin with an examination of the sign. The major premise of this article is that the sign and its significate are experiential, in the mind of the sign user. They are the mental representations of the sign’s vehicle and referent. A sign is a perception, an experience that is part of a larger psychophysical structure, the sign schema. The schema is activated when one uses the sign. The article develops a model of the sign schema of the experiential sign. The experiential sign is intended to be used as the primary tool for investigating the semiotic foundation of human communication.

Tartu : Tartu University Press eBooks, 2009

During the last years Sign Systems Studies has received a growing number of high-level contributions over all branches of semiotics, and thanks to our contributors can serve internationally among the major journals in the field. Increasing number of contributions requires corresponding development in our publishing policy. Since the current volume 37, Sign Systems Studies has changed the numbering of issues within volumes. In order to be more flexible, there will now be four issues per year, but for a better thematic arrangement of papers some will still be published as double issues. The journal has also seen changes in the list of international editorial board with the inclusion of Marcel Danesi and Jaan Valsiner. The team of editors has been restructured and includes now six members: Kalevi Kull, Kati Lindström, Mihhail Lotman, Timo Maran, Silvi Salupere and Peeter Torop. The new enlarged team of editors replaces the former national editorial board. We thank Peeter Veromann (Eesti Loodusfoto Publishers) for improvements in the design.

Sign Systems Studies

We are grateful for having the opportunity, offered to us by one of the participants in the Roundtable, Kalevi Kull, to prepare this issue of Sign Systems Studies on the basis of a selection of the papers presented at the workshop. While there are vast differences in aims and orientation of the three fields that the workshop brought together, there are also similarities. Integrationism, the language and communication theory of Roy Harris, seeks to dispel what it calls the 'language myth': the idea that language is an entirely separate mode of communication, that languages are systems of abstract linguistic signs, that linguistic communication involves the transmission or reproduction of mental content between individuals. Harris uses the dismissive term 'telementation' for the latter view, an implicit assumption in our lay thinking about how linguistic communication works. Instead, integrationism holds, the sign is a ubiquitous feature of all experience, is radically contextualized and individual, and is that by which a subject "integrates" what it encounters in the constitution of its being. Signs come into being the moment they are needed and they perish as soon as an individual act of integration has been completed. Not only language is a practice of integration; any relationality that we can think of comes about on the basis of integrating cotemporal activities of various kinds. Integrationism takes the radical nature of its proposal seriously: as sign-making is a radically contextual and

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2016

Traditionally in sign language research, the issue of whether a lexical sign is articulated with one hand or two has been treated as a strictly phonological matter. We argue that accounting for two-handed signs also requires considering meaning as a motivating factor. We report results from a Swadesh list comparison, an analysis of semantic patterns among two-handed signs, and a picture-naming task. Comparing four unrelated languages, we demonstrate that the two hands are recruited to encode various relationship types in sign language lexicons. We develop the general principle that inherently "plural" concepts are straightforwardly mapped onto our paired human hands, resulting in systematic use of the two hands across sign languages. In our analysis, "plurality" subsumes four primary relationship typesinteraction, location, dimension, and composition-and we predict that signs with meanings that encompass these relationships-such as 'meet', 'empty', 'large', or 'machine'-will preferentially be twohanded in any sign language.

In this commentary, I reply to the fourteen papers published in the Sign Systems Studies special issue on Peirce's Theory of Signs, with a view on connecting some of their central themes and theses and in putting some of the key points in those papers into a wider perspective of Peirce's logic and philosophy.

Human Development, 2001

Sigris and Tools. For some time, we have resorted to this doublet to explain how culture becomes mind. The metaphor has been of great use, yet probably tools have received more attention than signs. The possibility of conceiving culture as a set of artifacts, handed down from generation to generation, is easier than conceiving culture as a set of signs. The notion of cultural tools has had a powerful effect on thinking about the development of mind and of mentalitks. Signs themselves have often been translated into the language of tools to be used in solving the cognitive tasks at hand. There is a substantial difference between signs and tools, however. Signs involve meaning, and this leads us into difficult terrain.

Language and Semiotic Studies

This paper elaborates on some of Saussure's reflections on the structure of signs, and the role these signs play in the constitution of conscious thought. In the notes of La double essence, Saussure argued that the sign "creates" and "guides" thought, but as part of a reflection that is both complex and hesitant. To clarify this position and examine its relevance, we first analyze the general conception of the status of signs and semiotics, that Saussure developed in his Course II. We then examine the way in which, in the twentieth century, the problem of how human thought is constituted was tackled by Piaget and Vygotsky. Finally, drawing on the notes of La double Essence, we try to highlight the arguments that led Saussure to adopt the position quoted below, and we will show how Saussure's approach provides decisive arguments in support of the social interactionist position inherited from Vygotsky.

Proceedings of the 28th Conference of the International, 2004

Starting from a situated cognition perspective, this paper reports on the activity of 9 th grade students who are interpreting the shape of a graph arising from the motion of a bouncing ball. In an unfamiliar context, informed by previous knowledge of similar experiments, the obstacle of understanding why the graph does not start from the origin is overcome through an interplay between different signs.