1)a referent
2)a symbol for the referent
3)an entity that can percieve the association
Well, that's astart, but some (de Saussure for one) think that the referent is not the actual object in reality, but the concept in the noggin of the entity doing the perceiving. Many nouns do not refer to concrete objects, but to a myriad of abstract ones. Then, there's the sign, or word uttered, versus the sign of the sign of word printed out. It's not an easy mapping from one to the other either. Others have got caught up in the how the sign is related to the referent. For example, Peirce came up with a three-way classification of signs: symbol, index, and icon. The first one is the sign par exellence that Saussure talks about: a totally arbitrary, and by convention, relationship of the sign and the signified. The second one is kind of like the deictic particles (pronouns, adverbs of place, etc) that we discussed in another thread. The final one is a sign that some how resembles the referent: e.g., the whole bow-wow theory of language origin.
So, if I use something that looks like a word, e.g., vyerng, and get others to understand that by this new word, I mean "the joy one takes in winning an impossible argument against foes who are irrational". Well, is it a word or ain't it? Some would say it's slang or jargon or private vocabulary. But if only 15 out of those speaking English recognize and understand it, is it a word. I'm not really sure.
Your turn.
