"the signifieds of color terms are nothing but the product
or result of a system of distinctions".

What about that claim puzzles you? I guess, if something is the product of
distinctions, then there must be some *things* which are being made
distinct. Culler sees this point. And, leaves it hanging as something
counter-intuitive and yet what we have to live with. I could say more but
will wait too see if this is on your mind.

I am not in the least convinced that we agree what Culler's Saussure
means when he says that the sign is arbitrary, and ask you only to
revisit the passages I earlier suggested as relevant to this
particular question.

Ted Crowell
Healdsburg, CA

I will repeat that for Saussure (but not for postmodernists) a sign
had to be meaningful. A man wears a bowler hat. The hat might be a
sign that the man wishes to appear English. The bowler is part of a
system of communication via clothing choices, a social and customary
item. The hat is a sign.  A cloud drifting across the sky stands for
nothing in particular. It's not a sign.

According to some postmodernist literary theory, everything you see is
a sign, and that's another story, not Saussure's story. I have no
problem with Saussure's version.

I don't have any idea why you are so averse to using "assumption"
here.  "This is the way the world is for me" means "This is what I
assume."

Maybe I haven't explained it clearly. You've got it backwards. First
you identify the grammar rule and express it in words. You present an
argument to show that you have done this correctly. (Someone else may
present a counter argument at this point, but no one has done so
here.)

Next you notice that some sentence violates the rule. At that point it
is reasonable to say that the sentence is babble. No question has been
begged.

I will talk about other interpretations of "Referents do not precede
language" in a post tomorrow.

Postmodernists are another kettle of fish, and they are not above
claiming that people are invented by language ("Referents do not
precede language") -- and then claiming that they meant something else
altogether.  More on that tomorrow.

Best,

Gary
(ggoss...@aol.com)

A referent is what the sign points to. So there cannot be a referent
without a sign pointing to it. No can there be a sign without that which is
pointed out. They come together.

To those of you who are still reading offline as well as online, I
recommend "The Domain of Semiotics", pp. 108-119 of Culler.

What I am going to argue here is that the claim
"Referents do not precede language" is meaningless,
because the claim is made inside language.

***

VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

What "Referents do not precede language" says literally is that no
object exists before language. This implies that material objects are
created with language.  Everyone here has rejected this literal
interpretation of "Referents do not precede language."

"Referents do not precede language" has been interpreted in other
ways, including the possibility that what it means is that the parts
of speech (subjects, verbs, objects or referents) exist only in
language and do not precede it. The problem with that claim is that it
is self-evident.  If that were what "Referents do not precede
language" means, there would be no controversy.

"Referents do not precede language" has also been interpreted to mean
that linguistic structures inevitably and always shape the way we
divide up and look at "reality," so in that sense, there is no
"referent" without language. This is a psychological argument that
takes this form: Every single object in the universe that we perceive
has been shaped by human language. Human life is a head trip.

So far no convincing support has been offered to back up this
claim. People who have had experiences they couldn't put into words
need convincing.

A related explanation of "Referents do not precede language" is that
it is an inflated way of saying, "You can't talk about an object
unless you have a language to talk in."

Well, yes. Again, there is no controversy there.

Perhaps the clearest form of this type of postmodern claim is the
claim that everything you see, hear, smell or touch is a sign.

For Saussure, who was not a postmodernist but a scientist, the term
"sign" was reserved for items made up of a signifier and a signified.
A sign, by definition, meant something. (In Wittgensteinian terms, a
sign has a use.)  For example, I wear a cap with "Santa Rosa"
embroidered by machine on the front of it. I live near Santa Rosa,
California. People who see me wearing this cap may see the cap as a
sign that signifies the area I live in (although it was made by the
Santa Rosa cigar company). For Saussure, this cap is a sign. It is
part of a system of dress invented by humans to convey information.
The cap is a form of social communication.

A cloud drifting in the sky is not a sign for Saussure because it
signifies nothing in particular. It has no signified or meaning
(except perhaps to a weather forecaster, for whom the cloud may be a
sign of rain). (Note: I wrote this post before reading Rodrigo's
post.)

One sort of postmodernist has dropped Saussure's careful
differentiation between what is a sign and what is not a sign, because
the postmodernist is committed to a belief system in which the human
perception of the universe consists solely of signs. Everything is a
sign.

If the term "sign" doesn't differentiate some things from other
things, what does it mean to a postmodernist?

********************

INSIDE LANGUAGE

If there is a serious idea to consider in any of this, I think it has
to do with what it means to be inside language, something Zhuangzi was
writing about 2,300 years ago. Zhuangzi was a philosophical daoist,
which made him a linguistic philosopher, a cultural relativist, and a
perspectivist (as Bruce Denner might say). Zhuangzi noted that
different societies have different languages, customs and values. If
you tried to evaluate them, you had to do so from within a culture,
language and values -- and if you managed to get outside of all
culture, language and values, you would be unable to communicate from
that lofty spot, and when you returned you would be unable to explain
in words what it was you had experienced.

Zhuangzi understood that you could escape language by way of prolonged
daoist (later, Zen) meditation (or fasting or drugs or exercise or
whatever).  But you couldn't do that and think verbally at the same
time. Nor could you describe the unwordable.

Zhuangzi was talking about the View From Nowhere. The problem isn't
that it is unattainable; it's that you can't think in words once you
get there.

***

For the most part we think in words. I think in English, so I will
cheat and say that we think in English.

The postmodernists and Wittgensteinians agree with Zhuangzi that, as
we think verbally, we are inside language, and they agree that there
are consequences. That is what Bruce, Martin and I have in common.

Because we are inside English when we are thinking in English, it
becomes important to understand English and how it actually works. We
are trapped in English -- we need to know how the trap works.

(Saying we are "trapped" makes the whole enterprise sound negative,
when in fact English is a wonderful thing, of course, a huge and
useful natural language.)

Our use of English is a human activity, and we follow rules loosely as
we use English, rather like soccer is a human activity in which the
players follow FIFA rules loosely. We call the rules of English
"grammar."

Grammatical rules can be obeyed, stretched, broken. But if you keep
breaking the rules of English, at a certain point you are no longer
speaking English.  You do not make good sense in English.  Just as if,
in soccer, you picked up the ball with your hands and ran with
it. That would not make soccer sense -- you would not be playing
soccer.

If you break the basic rules of language, then you no longer make
sense in language.  For example, if you decided not to use syntax any

Grammar is what makes words and sentences meaningful.

When a speaker makes a few small grammatical errors, we can usually
figure out what the sentence means. But when a speaker makes a basic
error, like rejecting syntax, we can't understand her. We may begin to
ask for interpretations. That is what has happened with "Referents do
not precede language."

***

One of the fundamental rules of grammar is "objects exist
independently of us."  You understand that I am not claiming that this
statement is true.  All I am doing is putting into words a grammar
rule we follow while inside English.  We can say, "Please pass the
salt" in English because (in part) English has a rule that material
objects (like salt and people) exist independently of us.  Language is
based on, rests on, our taking for granted that objects (including
words) exist.

That is the case for all 6,000 natural languages, I believe. There is
no natural language that lacks this rule of grammar. You can see
why. Try to imagine a natural language in which the speakers could not
take for granted that words or people or material objects existed.

I will put it another way. All customary human activities rest
ultimately on things that we take for granted, things we believe but
cannot prove with words.  We take the existence of objects for granted
-- in the same way that a cat takes the existence of a mouse for
granted.  English grows out of the human form of life, which includes
what the human takes for granted. The deepest grammar rules reflect
our human form of life (and then there are also superficial grammar
rules that reflect our culture).

In 6,000 languages, a basic rule is that objects exist independently
of us.  To claim that referents do not precede language is to make a
claim that directly contradicts the grammar that makes language
meaningful. You can't convincingly deny the rules that make language
work while you are using language, while you are inside language. That
sort of violation of grammar pushes the sentence "referents do not
precede language" outside of meaningful language. That string of words
is, in English, not grammatical.

As a consequence, no one using English can explain "Referents do not
precede language" so that it has meaning, unless the interpreter
substitutes some distantly related idea like "You can't talk about an
object unless you have a language to talk in."

And who can argue with that?

Best,

Gary
(ggoss...@aol.com)

I'm trying to grasp what's bothering you Gary. We agree that under some
readings the Thread Title is non-controversial. It becomes controversial
when you attribute textual idealism. Moreover, we move further apart when
you try to rule out a philosophical possibility by yelling "grammatical
foul."

A pleasure to read.

To start off, one must understand what a sign is. The easy
example of a sign is a word. I suppose that we learn to
recognize what a sign or word is by encountering examples.

Words exist within a human-made system of communication
we call "language." Baseball caps exist within a human-made
system of communication we call "fashion." Both words and
baseball caps (in most contexts) are signs. The word "cloud"
is a sign, and humans use the sign "cloud" among one another.
A physical cloud is not a sign (but a smoke signal is a sign).

Yes, in semantics "referent" is a term for that which a
sign names. "Referent" is, in this sense, a technical term
akin to "verb." If I said, "Verbs do not precede language,"
who would care? If I said, "By definition referents are
attached to signs, and signs do not precede language,
so referents do not precede language," I have said nothing
of interest.

My position is that language is more complex than that.

**********

I am curious about your notion of child development.
An infant has no language. Does the infant perceive
objects? (For example, the infant's mother). If so, how does
the infant do this without language?

How is it possible to learn a language unless you already
can perceive objects (words, for instance) without a language?

Best,

Gary
(ggoss...@aol.com)

"Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to
fulfill its purpose...It only describes and in no way explains the use of
signs." (#496, LW's _PI_)

**********