Arbitrariness Of Sign Research Articles

Language and Place-knowledge on Norfolk Island

ABSTRACTUsing the place-naming practices in the small settler society of Norfolk Island, the home of Anglo-Polynesian descendants of the Bounty mutineers, we advance a linguistic argument against Saussure's claims concerning the arbitrariness of signs. When extended to place names, Saussure's claims about language in general imply place names in themselves hold no significance for how people interact with places. In contrast, we use ethnographic examples to show that people of Norfolk Island interact with the significance of the names themselves. Arguments for an integrated approach to toponymy in which place names are considered alongside other relational (cultural, economic and historical) factors that influence their use and meaning are put forward. We propose ‘toponymic ethnography’ as a useful methodology for understanding the connectedness of toponyms to people, place, and social networks.

Strukturelle Syntax

On Structural syntax
 The beginnings of structuralism lie with the Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who is therefore sometimes referred to as the "father" of structuralism. Important terms of structuralism are: langue/parole, synchrony/diachrony, descriptive/prescriptive, syntagmatic/paradigmatic, relevant feature/redundant feature. The concept of signs and the arbitrariness of signs also play an important role in structuralism. The present paper aims at studying the principles of struclturalism. The method of structuralism is initially inductive, even if it can lead to throwing the results, known different corpus, not realized and of which one waits that the results make clear. In other words, structuralism, in one way or another, always aims to read a text according to some grid that reorganizes it.