Biology, linguistics, and the semiotic perspective on language

Prisca Augustyn

pp. 169-189

in: Ekaterina Velmezova, Kalevi Kull, Stephen J. Cowley (eds), Biosemiotic perspectives on language and linguistics, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between biology and linguistics by tracing the corresponding parallel developments of phylogenetic thinking in the nineteenth century. The conception of languages and species as historical entities developed from a philosophical current that originated with philosophies of nature deriving predominantly from Kant, Goethe and Schelling. Following the epistemological and metaphysical trajectory of German Naturphilosophie, this paper explains how J. von Uexküll carried this biosemiotic approach to biology and language into the twentieth century while linguistics aligned its methods with psychology and other social sciences. Sebeok's contributions to linguistics and semiotics throughout the twentieth century were characterized by his commitment to biosemiotics, maintaining a close connection to biology and the anti-psychologism associated with the semiotic perspective on language. In several key aspects, Sebeok's views are shown to be compatible with Chomsky's biolinguistics.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph

Goethe Johann Wolfgang