The evolution of human language and the genetic code: An endosemiotic analysis
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Paul W. Dixon
Abstract
An analogy is drawn between the processes of human language evolution and the ongoing discoveries concerning how the human genome is constructed. Mutational evolution may be thought of in linguistic terms as an alternation in the genetic code following morphemic (meaningful) substitutions, deletions or additions. This may be termed an endosemiotic analysis where semiotic processes may be found at the biochemical level of the genome. Hence, owing to these genetic changes, phenotypic alterations in the morphology of the organism create those evolutionary changes seen in the development of the phyla in the paleontological record. We are now witnessing the inclusion of the genome of all species both plant and animal within our material culture as we begin to modify these genotypes with recombinant DNA/RNA technology. The coevolution of language and the genetic code may then occur as we begin to more thoroughly understand these interrelated evolutionary processes.
© Walter de Gruyter
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- Semiotic error in Roentgen diagnosis
- From semiotics of hypermedia to physics of semiosis: A view from system theory
- Sur la géométrisation de l'espace narratif dans le parcours interprétatif du texte littéraire
- Losing myself: Body as icon/body as object(s)
- Deniers and the golden calf: From fetishes to idols
- Making sense of objective knowledge: Anthropological challenges to literalism and visualism
- The forgotten art of isopsephy and the magic number KZ
- Code-switching and textual strategies in Nino Ricci's trilogy
- The concept of a symbol and the vacuousness of the symbolic conception of thought
- The evolution of human language and the genetic code: An endosemiotic analysis
- Hidden iconicity: A Peircean perspective on the Chinese picto-phonetic sign
- Cultures, timespace, and the border of borders: Posing as a theory of semiosic processes
- The construction of information and communication: A cybersemiotic reentry into Heinz von Foerster's metaphysical construction of second-order cybernetics
- Review of Processes and Boundaries of the Mind
- The universality and fecundity of Peirce's categories
Articles in the same Issue
- Semiotic error in Roentgen diagnosis
- From semiotics of hypermedia to physics of semiosis: A view from system theory
- Sur la géométrisation de l'espace narratif dans le parcours interprétatif du texte littéraire
- Losing myself: Body as icon/body as object(s)
- Deniers and the golden calf: From fetishes to idols
- Making sense of objective knowledge: Anthropological challenges to literalism and visualism
- The forgotten art of isopsephy and the magic number KZ
- Code-switching and textual strategies in Nino Ricci's trilogy
- The concept of a symbol and the vacuousness of the symbolic conception of thought
- The evolution of human language and the genetic code: An endosemiotic analysis
- Hidden iconicity: A Peircean perspective on the Chinese picto-phonetic sign
- Cultures, timespace, and the border of borders: Posing as a theory of semiosic processes
- The construction of information and communication: A cybersemiotic reentry into Heinz von Foerster's metaphysical construction of second-order cybernetics
- Review of Processes and Boundaries of the Mind
- The universality and fecundity of Peirce's categories
