Abstract
The issues addressed in these pages, the various positions that are defended within, and, more broadly, the main theoretical perspectives which will be pursued find their unity with respect to a morphodynamic model of the Saussurean sign, which, to put it as such, constitutes their center of gravity or intersection point.
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Notes
- 1.
All translations of citations which are referenced in French in the bibliography are our own unless otherwise specified.
- 2.
Petitot (1985), p. 290.
- 3.
Auroux (1998), pp. 210–211.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 210.
- 5.
Martin (2002), p. 16.
- 6.
“Existence is the absolute position of a thing and thereby differs from any sort of predicate, which, as such, is posited at each time merely relatively to another thing” (Kant in Walford and Meerbote 2003, p. 119), also quoted in Philonenko (1989, p. 39), or “the subtlest of concepts never abolish or produce an existing something” (Kempf, Introduction to Kant (1972/1763, p. 10).
- 7.
“The recovery of a thing by a representation would only be possible if the thing were, also, a representation” (Frege 1971, p. 172).
- 8.
“Natural reflection [‘natural’ understood here in the sense of ‘naive realism’] on the relation between knowledge, its sense, and its object almost inevitably makes [mistakes]” (Husserl 1999, p. 18) because it is impossible to understand “what it could mean for a being to be known in itself and yet be known in knowledge” (Ibid., p. 23).
- 9.
“[I]t was […] rightly felt that statements can be logically justified [and refuted] only by statements” (Popper 2005, p. 21).
- 10.
“The object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object” (Saussure 2013/1916, p. 9).
- 11.
To cite but a few of them, beginning with illustrious figures: Hjemslev, who almost replicates the Saussurean formulation: “Is it the object which determines and affects the theory, or is it the theory which determines and affects its object?” (Hjelmslev 1968, p. 23). Moreover: “as long as the method has not been applied, no so-called obvious facts will exist (those which some philosophers of language like to use as a starting point by appealing to naive realism, which, as we know, does not hold up to scientific examination” (Hjelmslev 1985, p. 72). Likewise, Benveniste (1966, p. 119): “[D]escription first of all necessitates specification of adequate procedures and criteria, and that, finally, the reality of the object is inseparable from the method given for its description” (Benveniste 1971, p. 101). Then, among our contemporaries: Reflecting upon what is a linguistic fact, Martin (2002, p. 22) notes that “the linguistic fact never goes beyond more or less conventional decisions.”
- 12.
Location of the faulty component, introduction or adjustment of ad hoc protective concepts, conventional core….
- 13.
The falsifiability requirement, in its most general principle, is admitted as a character of intellectual probity: “most philosophers appear to now be persuaded that there exists no universal criteria of scientificity […] though it is not uncommon to hear the same people complain that a theory […] is not clearly testable, which presupposes that they accept the idea that if testability does not represent a necessary and sufficient condition of scientificity, it constitutes at least a desirable methodological ideal […] testability being a virtue, and irrefutability, a vice” (Boyer 2000, p. 166).
- 14.
More precisely exposed in Piotrowski (2009, pp. 112–121).
- 15.
Terminology borrowed from Granger (1992, pp. 267–268).
- 16.
Which correspond to the “data models” of contemporary epistemology, cf. Bitbol (1998, p. 47).
- 17.
Auroux (1998, p. 168).
- 18.
Ibid., p. 215.
- 19.
Regarding this point, the consensus is obvious, as stated namely by Dalbéra (2002, p. 9): “The corpus can only be a construct and […] its construction forms an integral part of the theoretical lens through which the linguist intends to apprehend reality.”
- 20.
Lazard (2001, p. 17).
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Ollivier (2000, p. 27).
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 20.
- 26.
Boyer (2000, p. 181).
- 27.
Granger (1979, p. 200).
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Piotrowski, D. (2017). Introduction. In: Morphogenesis of the Sign. Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55325-2_1
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