ABSTRACT
This chapter treats topics that have been dealt with in passing in previous chapters. The discussions are intended to serve the double function of forming subordinate parts of the theory and confirming its basic details by showing their explanatory power. The main topics are: historical change in meaning; the semiosis of language; the relation between semantics and the syntactic and phonological strata; the relations between semantics and knowledge, and between semantics and reality. The semiosis section shows that signs are more varied, and used in more varied ways, than traditional views on linguistic semiotics have shown. Not all linguistic signs are symbols, for example, or even Peirce’s indexes and icons as symbols; some are “signals” (like biological signals) or “markers” (which resemble symbols but do not relate to their significance one to one). Other sections argue that traditional views of language have misrepresented the nature of syntax and that we should treat significance in language as a linguistic matter, not identifying meaning with knowledge of the world, which is treated in science and philosophy.
