4 Derivation and the Lexicon
4.1 The Saussurean Sign
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), one of the first modern linguists, believed that language was a system of signs. He defined a linguistic sign as an arbitrary pairing between what he called the signifiant ‘signifier’, a particular sequence of sounds, and the signifié ‘signified’, the concept that is denoted by the sound sequence. These three terms, sign, signifier, and signified, are still standard in linguistics.
Saussure (1969) distinguished between motivated and unmotivated signs. A sign is motivated to the extent that by inspection you can get clues as to what it means. A walk signal at a crosswalk is an example of a motivated sign, because the stylized image of a person walking or standing indicates whether you should or should not cross the street. A stop sign is partially motivated. The fact that it has eight sides is arbitrary, but its red color is not. In our culture, red is often associated with danger and a call to alertness. Red is also the color lit up on a traffic light when drivers are required to stop. The numeral 8 is an unmotivated sign. Nothing about ...
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