Abstract
Two primary characteristics of Index in ontogeny are intentionality of use, and the emergence of visual representation in memory. Demonstration of intentionality in indexical gestures requires the apprehension of source, path, and goal according to Piaget’s model, upon which Lakoff and Johnson’s model is constructed.
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- 1.
Cf. Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 32–34) for a more extended discussion of the source-path-goal schema.
- 2.
Working Memory has replaced and extended reference to Short Term Memory (STM) in the fields of cognition and psycholinguistics. Baddeley and Logie (1999: 32) posit the existence of “visual cache” in the WM system, which stores visual representations of objects, their contexts, and their identities.
- 3.
Nevertheless, the quality of Firstness does characterize gaze pattern. But for apprehension of the signified (demonstrated in gaze following), the indexical nature of gaze trajectory is unlikely to materialize, underscoring the pivotal role of Firstness in the ontogeny of index and in its interpretants. The effect at this early developmental period is primarily emotional in that the impetus for the effect is based in idiosyncratic affect, i.e. notice of others’ change in gaze direction. “But no sign can have any significant effect beyond the emotional unless mediated by an emotional interpretent. After all, we must feel that we recognize the sign if it is to have any further effects on us” (Almeder 1980: 30).
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In Piagetian terms, the source is unrecognized ego, or, where ego “is” in the spatial array—hence, the origo is also unrecognized. The goal, then, is the purpose or endpoint.
- 5.
Quinn’s design is representative of others in that it uses looking time as an indication that infants recognize that a change in location has taken place. In this case, recognition of a new location with respect to the landmark is indicated by more extended looking time, whereas shorter looking time is associated with recognition of an unchanged location.
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Intentionality is but one aspect of deixis in the present theory, and is supported by Levinson’s (2004) analysis of indexical terms. Levinson’s second component of deixis will be taken up in the following section.
- 7.
“Object files are temporary object representations that interface between sensory information and long-term semantic information” (Leslie and Káldy 2007, p.117). In addition to spatiotemporal information, they include perceptual and functional features of an object held in WM.
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Object files eventually include inextricably bound perceptual and functional characteristics of an object which are held together in WM. Such features may include color, shape, size, et cetera (Leslie and Káldy 2007).
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In perceptual motor schemes, the physical attributes are not distinct from the action-based exchange with the object. Hence, an interesting (and as yet unresearched) question is: If one were to lose the index, would one be able to retrieve the object file?
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WM extends STM in that limits on the amount of information to be remembered and its duration have been extended from seven units to approximately fifteen (Naiman 1974: 22; Erlam 2005: 153–154, 2009: 78) over three seconds (Eysenck, 2001: 163). WM, likewise, provides for the integration of information to slave systems (the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad) with information from Long Term Memory (LTM) (Baddeley and Hitch 1974: 80–81; Baddeley 2000:418, 2007: 7–13).
- 11.
Full-fledged reversibility takes place in Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage, between the ages of 5;0 and 7;0. It entails the means to recognize and reason that a current perceptual state of an object, e.g., shape, can be returned to its previous perceptual state without changing any substantial characteristics of the object. Conservation of mass, for example, requires a child to hold the current shape of clay (a pancake) in memory and call up the previous shape of the clay (a round ball), using the rationale that the mass of clay is the same in the pancake as in the ball, since it can be reformed into the ball once more. (Cf. Sect. 4.3 for further discussion.).
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Further discussion of index and absent objects will be provided in 2.4.2.
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Cf. 2.2.2 for further discussion of exophora and its function(s).
- 14.
This children’s folk song is used widely in the United States and the United Kingdom in preschools and with care-takers (cf. Seeger 1948: 126), and is as follows: “The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout/Down came the rain, and washed the spider out/Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain/And the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again.” Alternate versions include: “The Incy Wincy Spider” in Fraser (1975: 28) and “The Blooming Bloody Spider” in North (1910: 279–280).
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The particular pragmatic skills ascertained in indexical, leading to deictic use is the likelihood of behavioral pointers to refer to different referents on each occasion of use. In the field of linguistics, “pragmatics” pertains to the context, both linguistic and extralinguistic; the spatial context includes the participants apart from their roles, other foregrounded or backgrounded objects, and the “scene.” In the field of linguistics, “semantics” refers to specific and general meanings which adhere to a particular term, namely, invariant meanings (in the case of the latter) which do not focus on the particular referent person/object, e.g., the invariant meaning of “here” is placed near the speaker, whereas a pragmatic approach simply attaches “here” to the particular location referred to at any one point in time.
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In short, C. Lyons describes the diachronic process of demonstrative to definite article as follows: “The semantic weakening or ‘bleaching’ taken to be involved in the shift from demonstrative to article reflects a very general diachronic process of devaluation of lexical content. This process can be described in terms of loss of lexico-semantic features, and in the case we are concerned with it is essentially the feature [+Dem] which is affected…. It is much more common, however, for articles to have no deictic content, so that their creation involves loss of deictic features as well as [+Dem]” (1999: 331–332).
- 17.
While in English, the speaker is the only origo for demonstrative use, other linguistic systems encode additional origos such as proximal/distal objects from the addressee's perspective or from the addressee and speaker's perspective, should they share spatial orientations (Diessel 1999: 36; Burenholt 2008: 101).
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Although linguistic complexity is an additional factor in determining degree of markedness, it is immaterial in the case of the English demonstratives, consequent to their similar phonetic forms.
- 20.
Like exophoric uses, endophoric uses are non-deictic if they are accompanied early on by pointing/eye gaze, and/or are used noncontrastively.
- 21.
Productive use entails both semantic and syntactic variability—employing each pronoun with distinctive verb lexicons and distinctive object NPs, as well as employing them in cases other than nominative, e.g., “me,” “my,” “you,” and/or “your.”.
- 22.
“Epistemic” modality refers to the degree of responsibility which speaker assumes for the content of the message—its veracity and source. “Deontic” modality is concerned with the actualization of acts performed by morally responsible agents—a more discourse-oriented phenomenon, given its propositional nature. The latter implies a resultative state or behavior, while the former expresses the speaker’s mental state of affairs/cognitions. Cf. Leiss (2008) for a more extended discussion of these modalities.
- 23.
Morford and Goldin-Meadow (1992) observe that manual iconics are never used concurrently with speech, whereas pointing is commonly paired with speech, namely, demonstratives.
- 24.
Crais et al. (2004: 681) extend deictic use even to such behaviors as Bruner’s joint attention function, indicating that socially motivated eye gaze is sufficient to qualify as deictic.
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Performatives can be gestural and/or linguistic. They indicate the intent of one party toward an event in which another party is participating, and in so doing, performatives often influence the behavior of non-agents in the event to satisfy the wishes of the agent.
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This deontic purpose may not consist in turn-taking if the performative expresses the child’s wishes only, and not those of the other partner.
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While both groups of infants (4.5 and 5.5 months) looked “reliably longer” at the object being occluded, it is unclear (at Baillargeon’s admission) what the younger infants were attending to: the rotating screen occluding the object, or the occluded object itself (1993: 271). Consequently, additional investigations need to more firmly establish when these competencies emerge.
- 28.
Interlocutors’ use of indexes likewise serves as a precursor to infants’ own gestural and linguistic indexes. Gallerani et al. (2009: 284) indicate that caregivers’ use of past and future syntax, where questions, and epistemic mental state terms facilitate infants’ reference to absent objects.
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West, D.E. (2014). The Origin of Indexical Species. In: Deictic Imaginings: Semiosis at Work and at Play. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 11. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39443-0_2
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