Factors of semiogenesis (philosophical and linguistic analysis)

Abstract

The article deals with the philosophical and cognitive criteria of the evolution of the sign (semiogenesis), growing from signal to symbol and further to the sign in Language. The article aims to reveal not only differences among the three semiotic forms, but also their common and generic features. As a common philosophical criterion, to define generic feature of all evolutional semiotic forms and to explain the principle of the inner relationship between the form and the meaning in them, category of otherbeing (inobytié) is used. The cognitive analysis, which deals with the differential features of the evolutional semiotic entities, is developed on the base of the categories of identification and interpretation. The both functions, the identification and the interpretation, correlate with each other differently in signal, in symbol and in conventional sign of Language. The transition from one function to another characterizes the essence of the speech actualization of the sign in the process of semiosis. The only functional condition, that remains common and unchangeable in all kinds of sign, is the transition to the otherbeing. The otherbeing (whatever its functional perspective) represents the phenomenology of the sign in speech. The article may be interesting for the specialists in philosophy, semiotics and general linguistics.