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A sign relation is the basic construct in the theory of signs, also known as semiotics, as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce.
Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun. (C.S. Peirce, "Syllabus" ( c. 1902), Collected Papers, CP 2.274).
In his picturesque illustration of a sign relation, along with his tracing of a corresponding sign process, or semiosis, Peirce uses the technical term representamen for his concept of a sign, but the shorter word is precise enough, so long as one recognizes that its meaning in a particular theory of signs is given by a specific definition of what it means to be a sign.
Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. A definition of a sign will be given which no more refers to human thought than does the definition of a line as the place which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time. Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. It is from this definition, together with a definition of "formal", that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic. I also make a historical review of all the definitions and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my definition is no novelty, but that my non-psychological conception of logic has virtually been quite generally held, though not generally recognized. (C.S. Peirce, NEM 4, 20–21).
In the general discussion of diverse theories of signs, the question frequently arises whether signhood is an absolute, essential, indelible, or ontology property of a thing, or whether it is a relational, interpretive, and mutable role that a thing can be said to have only within a particular context of relationships.
Peirce's definition of a sign defines it in relation to its object and its interpretant sign, and thus it defines signhood in relative terms, by means of a predicate with three places. In this definition, signhood is a role in a triadic relation, a role that a thing bears or plays in a given context of relationships — it is not as an absolute, non-relative property of a thing-in-itself, one that it possesses independently of all relationships to other things.
Some of the terms that Peirce uses in his definition of a sign may need to be elaborated for the contemporary reader.
Imagine a discussion between two people, Ann and Bob, and attend only to that aspect of their interpretive practice that involves the use of the following nouns and pronouns: "Ann", "Bob", "I", "you".
The object domain of this discussion fragment is the set of two people {Ann, Bob}. The syntactic domain or the sign system that is involved in their discussion is limited to the set of four signs {"Ann", "Bob", "I", "You"}.
In their discussion, Ann and Bob are not only the passive objects of nominative and accusative references but also the active interpreters of the language that they use. The system of interpretation (SOI) associated with each language user can be represented in the form of an individual triadic relation called the sign relation of that interpreter.
Understood in terms of its set theory extension, a sign relation L is a subset of a cartesian product O × S × I. Here, O, S, I are three sets that are known as the object domain, the sign domain, and the interpretant domain, respectively, of the sign relation L ⊆ O × S × I.
Broadly speaking, the three domains of a sign relation can be any sets whatsoever, but the kinds of sign relations that are typically contemplated in a computational setting are usually constrained to having I ⊆ S. In this case, interpretants are just a special variety of signs, and this makes it convenient to lump signs and interpretants together into a single class called the syntactic domain. In the forthcoming examples, S and I are identical as sets, so the same elements manifest themselves in two different roles of the sign relations in question. When it is necessary to refer to the whole set of objects and signs in the union of the domains O, S, I for a given sign relation L, one may refer to this set as the world of L and write W = W L = O ∪ S ∪ I.
To facilitate an interest in the abstract structures of sign relations, and to keep the notations as brief as possible as the examples become more complicated, it serves to introduce the following general notations:
| | align="center" | O || = | Object Domain |
| Sign Domain |
| Interpretant Domain |
Introducing a few abbreviations for use in considering the present Example, we have the following data:
| | align="center" O | = | {Ann, Bob} | = | {A, B} |
| S | = | {"Ann", "Bob", "I", "You"} | = | {"A", "B", "i", "u"} |
| I | = | {"Ann", "Bob", "I", "You"} | = | {"A", "B", "i", "u"} |
In the present Example, S = I = Syntactic Domain.
The next two Tables give the sign relations associated with the interpreters A and B, respectively, putting them in the form of relational databases. Thus, the rows of each Table list the ordered triples of the form ( o, s, i) that make up the corresponding sign relations, LA and LB ⊆ O × S × I. It is often tempting to use the same names for objects and for relations involving these objects, but it is best to avoid this in a first approach, taking up the issues that this practice raises after the less problematic features of these relations have been treated.
| + Sign Relation of Interpreter A |
| "A" |
| "i" |
| "A" |
| "i" |
| "B" |
| "u" |
| "B" |
| "u" |
| + Sign Relation of Interpreter B |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
These Tables codify a rudimentary level of interpretive practice for the agents A and B, and provide a basis for formalizing the initial semantics that is appropriate to their common syntactic domain. Each row of a Table names an object and two co-referent signs, making up an ordered triple of the form ( o, s, i) that is called an elementary relation, that is, one element of the relation's set-theoretic extension.
Already in this elementary context, there are several different meanings that might attach to the project of a formal semiotics, or a formal theory of meaning for signs. In the process of discussing these alternatives, it is useful to introduce a few terms that are occasionally used in the philosophy of language to point out the needed distinctions.
| LOS | = | projOS( L) | = | { ( o, s) ∈ O × S : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some i ∈ I } |
| LSO | = | projSO( L) | = | { ( s, o) ∈ S × O : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some i ∈ I } |
| LIS | = | projIS( L) | = | { ( i, s) ∈ I × S : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some o ∈ O } |
| LSI | = | projSI( L) | = | { ( s, i) ∈ S × I : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some o ∈ O } |
| LOI | = | projOI( L) | = | { ( o, i) ∈ O × I : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some s ∈ S } |
| LIO | = | projIO( L) | = | { ( i, o) ∈ I × O : ( o, s, i) ∈ L for some s ∈ S } |
By way of unpacking the set-theoretic notation, here is what the first definition says in ordinary language. The dyadic relation that results from the projection of L on the OS-plane O × S is written briefly as LOS or written more fully as projOS( L), and it is defined as the set of all ordered pairs ( o, s) in the cartesian product O × S for which there exists an ordered triple ( o, s, i) in L for some interpretant i in the interpretant domain I.
In the case where L is a sign relation, which it becomes by satisfying one of the definitions of a sign relation, some of the dyadic aspects of L can be recognized as formalizing aspects of sign meaning that have received their share of attention from students of signs over the centuries, and thus they can be associated with traditional concepts and terminology. Of course, traditions may vary as to the precise formation and usage of such concepts and terms. Other aspects of meaning have not received their fair share of attention, and thus remain anonymous on the contemporary scene of sign studies.
The dyadic relation that makes up the denotative, referential, or semantic aspect or component of a sign relation L is notated as Den( L). Information about the denotative aspect of meaning is obtained from L by taking its projection on the object-sign plane, in other words, on the 2-dimensional space that is generated by the object domain O and the sign domain S. This semantic component of a sign relation L is written in any one of the forms, LOS, projOS L, L12, proj12 L, and it is defined as follows:
Looking to the denotative aspects of LA and LB, various rows of the Tables specify, for example, that A uses "i" to denote A and "u" to denote B, whereas B uses "i" to denote B and "u" to denote A. All of these denotative references are summed up in the projections on the OS-plane, as shown in the following Tables:
| { align="center" border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="background:lightcyan; font-weight:bold; text-align:center; width:90%" | + projOS( LA) |
| "A" | |
| "i" | |
| "B" | |
| "u" |
| + projOS( LB) |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
The connection that a sign makes to an interpretant is here referred to as its connotation. In the full theory of sign relations, this aspect of meaning includes the links that a sign has to affects, concepts, ideas, impressions, intentions, and the whole realm of an agent's mental states and allied activities, broadly encompassing intellectual associations, emotional impressions, motivational impulses, and real conduct. Taken at the full, in the natural setting of semiotic phenomena, this complex system of references is unlikely ever to find itself mapped in much detail, much less completely formalized, but the tangible warp of its accumulated mass is commonly alluded to as the connotative import of language.
Formally speaking, however, the connotative aspect of meaning presents no additional difficulty. For a given sign relation L, the dyadic relation that constitutes the connotative aspect or connotative component of L is notated as Con( L).
The connotative aspect of a sign relation L is given by its projection on the plane of signs and interpretants, and is thus defined as follows:
All of these connotative references are summed up in the projections on the SI-plane, as shown in the following Tables:
| { align="center" border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="background:lightcyan; font-weight:bold; text-align:center; width:90%" | + projSI( LA) |
| "A" | |
| "i" | |
| "A" | |
| "i" | |
| "B" | |
| "u" | |
| "B" | |
| "u" |
| + projSI( LB) |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
The ennotational component of meaning for a sign relation L is captured by its projection on the plane of the object and interpretant domains, and it is thus defined as follows:
As it happens, the sign relations LA and LB are fully symmetric with respect to exchanging signs and interpretants, so all of the data of projOS LA is echoed unchanged in projOI LA and all of the data of projOS LB is echoed unchanged in projOI LB.
| { align="center" border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="background:lightcyan; font-weight:bold; text-align:center; width:90%" | + projOI( LA) |
| "A" | |
| "i" | |
| "B" | |
| "u" |
| + projOI( LB) |
| "A" |
| "u" |
| "B" |
| "i" |
| A gives B to C |
| A gives B to C | A benefits C with B |
| B enriches C at expense of A | C receives B from A |
| C thanks A for B | B leaves A for C |
Words spoken are symbols or signs (σύμβολα) of affections or impressions (παθήματα) of the soul (ψυχή); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (σημεῖα), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (πράγματα) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (ὁμοιώματα). (Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 1.16a4).
Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. A definition of a sign will be given which no more refers to human thought than does the definition of a line as the place which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time. Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. It is from this definition, together with a definition of "formal", that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic. I also make a historical review of all the definitions and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my definition is no novelty, but that my non-psychological conception of logic has virtually been quite generally held, though not generally recognized. (C.S. Peirce, "Application to the Carnegie Institution", L75 (1902), NEM 4, 20-21).
A Sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to the same Object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum. (CP 2.92; quoted in Fisch 1986: 274)
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