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5 I 2 Jean Piaget
The second level characteristic of the semeiotic function (a level which, until
we know more about it, would seem to be peculiar to the human species) is
that of articulated language, of which the two new features as compared with
the previous level are, firstly, that it implies social or educational transmission
and thus depends upon the whole of society and no longer on individual reac-
tions; and secondly that the verbal signifants consist of ‘signs’ and no longer of
symbols, the sign being conventional or ‘arbitrary’ as required by its collective
nature.
The first major interdisciplinary questions which such a picture raises are then,
firstly, to determine the common mechanisms and the antagonisms in and be-
tween various manifestations of the semeiotic function, but going right back to
the level of the significant indices and the currently known forms of animal
language; and, secondly, to determine their connexion with the development of
representation or thought in general, regardless of any possible or more partic-
ular relations between articulated language and logic.
The first of these demands collaboration between zoopsychology or ethol-
ogy, genetic psychology, the psychopathology of aphasia, deaf-mutes, the
blind, etc., and linguistics. Ethology has already built up a fairly substantial
body of material on the innate releasing mechanisms (IRM) which come into
play at the instinctual level and on the releasing mechanisms acquired through
learning. Von Frisch’s well-known studies on the language of bees have evoked
many reactions from psychologists and linguists (Benveniste), while Revesz
has undertaken some systematic comparisons of the ‘languages’ of vertebrates
and of man. The general tendency is to regard animal language as being based
not on systems of signs but on a ‘code of signals’ (Benveniste). For one thing,
there is neither dialogue nor the free composition of elements; for another, the
signals used are essentially imitative or mimetic (though it has not yet been
established whether there is already deferred imitation). Such imitative mecha-
nisms thus fall within the sensori-motor pattern, innate or acquired, and do not
yet correspond to a conceptualization; whereas in human language not only
does every word connote a concept, but the syntactical arrangement of the
words itself conveys information.
It is therefore tempting to look for the source of thought itself in sign language,
as indeed many psychologists and linguists believe. But although the system of
signs has undoubtedly one exceptional advantage on account of its constructive
mobility and of the considerable number of meanings which it is capable of
conveying, considerations of two kinds regarding the limits of its powers must
be remembered.
The first is that although language is a necessary auxiliary to the fulfilment of
thought insofar as the latter constitutes interiorized intelligence, it is nonetheless
activated by intelligence, which precedes it in its sensori-motor form; this is a
problem which we wil consider again shortly in connexion with the relations
between logic and language. But it must be remembered that, however collec-
tive language may be (in its structures, findings, penalties, etc.), it is bound up
in its functioning with individual intelligences outside of which its signifants
would have no signif& and whose sensori-motor pattern itself creates a multi-