Why is the linguistic sign arbitrary

I was rather surprised to come along this article today as I just spoke to my students about Ferdinand de Saussure. Thanks for a nice chat and have a good week as well. Dear Stan, thanks for being so understanding. Going back to your original topic -Language change and the arbitrariness of the sign- Are you familiar with the article Language by Ian Bradshaw published in ? He talks about diachronic changes, semantic anachronism, ambiguity and vagueness in interpreting the Bible.

You might find his musings quite interesting. Take care Diana. For example, in a nice demonstration of the arbitrariness of the sign, the first three, R, D, W, encode the sounds e, a, la. Mama-papa words are another significant exception to the arbitrariness of the sign as you wrote about earlier. You are commenting using your WordPress.

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Blog at WordPress. Sentence first An Irishman's blog about the English language. Language change and the arbitrariness of the sign Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure — devised a model of linguistic meaning involving what he called the signifier a symbolic or phonological form and what it signifies. How he knitted these concepts together may be seen in this passage by Jonathan Culler in his book Saussure Fontana Modern Masters, : What is the connection between the arbitrary nature of the sign and the profoundly historical nature of language?

Like this: Like Loading October 28, at pm. Nelida K. Die Sprachwandeltheorie von Ferdinand Sprache und Schrift in Hermann Pauls Sprachspiel: L. Wittgenstein und F. Das Zeichensystem Ferdinand de Saussures. Ferdinand de Saussure - Leben und Wer Grevisse und Saussure - ein Vergleich. Saussures identische Differenz des Ze Saussures Sprachbetr Ferdinand de Saussure: Das sprachlich Elemente der Konzeptionen von Schrift Analogie und Sprache - Betrachtunge But we have just seen that natural data have no place in linguistics.

To use Alexander again, consider —5 :. Saussure depended… on a number of key concepts that were identical with the controversial and widely discussed terms of the Durkheim school. Most linguistic historians eg. Just as Durkheim insisted that religious symbols could not be reduced to their interactional base, Saussure emphasized the autonomy of linguistics signs vis-a-vis their social and physical referents.

The first essay on the matter in English states Washabaugh :. However, a careful reading of Durkheim will show that these resemblances are only terminological. A far more important question than whether Saussure actually claimed meaning is arbitrary is whether meaning actually is arbitrary. For the same reason I cannot use this latter example to assert that all letters in the alphabet correspond to the shape of the mouth, we should not use the former to claim that all letters are arbitrarily related to their sounds.

Even worse is using such examples to make claims about the operation of meaning in general the fallacy of composition. The range of arbitrariness or motivation in semiotic systems is, after all, an empirical question which scores of scholars have been exploring for decades.

More problematic than misinterpreting Saussure, then, is wielding his lecture notes as a means to shut down this line of inquiry. But, does this need to be the case? I would argue it does not, and furthermore that this opens up a much broader scope for cultural analysis. As fire is also used to cook, for example, smoke is also associated with food.

That the associations between meanings and signs are made more or less probable by the structure of reality does not mean they are not also conventional.

Furthermore, I would contend, a more fruitful point of departure for cultural analysis is a framework which can account for both the arbitrary and motivated aspects of meaning. Alexander, Jeffrey. Nordquist, Richard. Linguistic Arbitrariness. Sound Symbolism in English: Definition and Examples.

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