小说中的形象性和语言外文文献

文献信息

标题: Iconicity and the Origin of Language: Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) and Giorgio Fano (1885-1963)

作者: Petrilli, Susan

出版物名称: The American Journal of Semiotics

卷: 24

期: 4

页: 123-136

页数: 14

出版年份: 2008

出版日期: 2008

年份: 2008

出版商: Semiotic Society of America

出版物地点: Kent

出版物国家/地区: United States

出版物主题: Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works, Humanities: Comprehensive Works

ISSN: 02777126

Iconicity and the Origin of Language: Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) and Giorgio Fano (1885-1963) Marr, renowned for his superficial and rather reckless linguistic theories; and, at the opposite extreme, by another Russian author, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, whose fame today is spreading globally, and certainly throughout the United States as well as in Europe, thanks to his important contributions to the study of language, signs, and literary genres (with particular reference to the novel).2 The problem of language origin should not be underestimated, especially when attempting to avoid orientations that theorize a gap separating human and nonhuman animal communication, thereby losing sight of the essential semiotical continuity that instead unites the two spheres in our biosphere (as Sebeok's zoösemiotics has evidenced so well). Focussing upon such continuity from the point of view of communication and the continuity between human and nonhuman animal sign systems, Sebeok (1986: 13), citing Gregory Bateson, describes the "complex forms of art, music, ballet ... and the like, and, even in everyday life the intricacies of human kinesic communication, facial expression and vocal intonation" as the perfected forms of the nonverbal aptitudes and organs in animals.

The first partial edition of Origini e natura del linguaggio by Giorgio Fano appeared in 1962, under the tide Saggio sulle origini del linguaggio (Essay on the origins of language). The enlarged edition appeared in 1973, and by comparison to the 1962 edition deals not only with the problem of the origins of language, but also with the problem of the nature or essence of language. This second enlarged edition was commissioned to me for translation into English by Thomas A. Sebeok for Indiana University Press. The translation was published in 1992 under the title The Origins and Nature of Language.

Of the two parts, I believe that the second is the more interesting and topical. The general framework is that of linguistics and semiotics, whilst the first part presents rather excessive and unfruitful efforts at analysis on language origin. In truth, Fano himself declares his diffidence towards glottogonic theories (i.e., theories concerning the origin of human language),1 and criticizes interpretations of an empirical-inductive, psychological, and theological order. He underlines the difficulty, if not the absolute impossibility, of formulating a definitive scientific solution to the problem of language origin, considering especially the ideoscopic nature of scientific data. According to the gestural-mimetic theory that Fano is inclined to support, human language was originally a mimetic language accompanied by emotional cries, which is certainly not a new theory. It has been taken up and developed in relatively recent times by the Russian linguist Ja. Marr, renowned for his superficial and rather reckless linguistic theories; and, at the opposite extreme, by another Russian author, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, whose fame today is spreading globally, and certainly throughout the United States as well as in Europe, thanks to his important contributions to the study of language, signs, and literary genres (with particular reference to the novel).2

The problem of language origin should not be underestimated, especially when attempting to avoid orientations that theorize a gap separating human and nonhuman animal communication, thereby losing sight of the essential semiotical continuity that instead unites the two spheres in our biosphere (as Sebeok's zoösemiotics has evidenced so well). Focussing upon such continuity from the point of view of communication and the continuity between human and nonhuman animal sign systems, Sebeok (1986: 13), citing Gregory Bateson, describes the "complex forms of art, music, ballet ... and the like, and, even in everyday life the intricacies of human kinesic communication, facial expression and vocal intonation" as the perfected forms of the nonverbal aptitudes and organs in animals. At the same time, however, animal languages and human languages are not homologous, in the sense of anthropomorphic interpretations. As Sebeok has clearly stated, verbal language is a species-specific feature of Homo sapiens, so that "man alone has the competence to communicate by both nonverbal and verbal means, often inseparably interwreathed".3

Like all those theories supporting the thesis of the gestural-mimetic origin of language, Giorgio Fano's glottogonic theory, given its non-scientific character, can hardly be confuted. All the same, Fano's hypotheses are distant from those theories, even the most convincing, that are characterized by hypothetical speculation or science-fictional experimentation, given the lack of credible scientific documentation - reference here is specially to theories which, in their quest to explain the origins of language, give unquestioning support to the "talking" dogs, horses, monkeys and dolphins that have "argued" their way through the relevant literature of the past century. One of the most thorough and scientificaUy informed contributions to demoUshing such science fictional theories has come from Sebeok - for example:4

Attempts to seek the "origin of language" in the communication system of any ancestral species are based on a fallacious miscalculation. Thus the naive efforts of a handful of psychologists, who tried to justify the public toU required to instill what they misguidedly believe to be language-like propensities in a few enslaved primates by claiming that they are thereby about to uncovet the toots of language, ate bleakly self-delusive. The unschooled public, enthusiastically whipped on by an irresponsible but sizeable segment of the media - whether cynical or simply sharing its readership's credulity - has been bamboozled into believing that man's unique verbal code is in an evolutionary continuum with the multifold and diversiform nonverbal codes of the extinct hominoids, presumed to be stiU embodied in the extant great apes.

The problem of the origin of human verbal language has remained unsolved and in reality is of relatively little