Unlocking the nature of the linguistic sign: in-between motivation and arbitrariness

Abstract

It is assumed that the radical changes that have taken place in theoretical linguistics over the last 3 decades or so has led to a rejection of the conception of language seen exclusively as an independent and autonomous system of signs. Having set this conception against the background of the major 19th century approaches to language, we claim that the autonomy postulate seems to have been giving way to the idea that language is a symbol of human experience. The article presents, then, a brief, yet systematic, historical survey of the from-motivation-via-arbitrariness-to-motivation projection of linguistics since the 19th century, and identifies some of the practical implications of this projection.

Keywords

• history of linguistics
• theoretical linguistics
• applied linguistics
• system
• symbol