Tegn og deiksis

Resumé

Five theses about sign systems and articulation: It is shown that although most sign systems with single articulation (mathematics, predicate logic and sheets of music) lack deictic reference, the artificial language Ro has deixis. Double articulation of natural languages gives redundancy necessary for the performance in real time of the messages. In general, meaning is to be anchored to rhetorical situation, but mathematics and logic is not anchored and the meaning is consequently always generic. Natural sign systems have four types of meaning that are metacommunication of each other: conceptual meaning, propositional meaning, informational meaning and interactional meaning.