Abstract
The ways in which we manage to achieve representation of our mental signs in the world lying beyond our crania retain a perennial interest among semioticists, especially when those signs use the vocal tract (tongue, lips, larynx, etc.) or the scribal tract (mainly the hand). (Face and shoulders also convey a lot, as by winking and shrugging, but these fall well short of our present compass.) In both vocal and scribal media “semiotic evolution” affects our physical realizations, changing them over time, hence how we get outside our crania (when we do) and what our signs end up signifying. In what follows I mean to offer a fresh analysis of the influence of the scribal tract's three digits, the “scriptor,” by means of which, armed with the needful prosthetic device (pen or otherwise), we realize our mental signs on the page.
About the author
W. C. Watt (b. 1932) is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine 〈williamwatt@cox.net〉. His research interests include semiotic theory, writing systems, literature, and chiristics. His publications include Writing systems and cognition: Perspectives from psychology, physiology, linguistics, and semiotics (1994); “On the visual and kinetic constitution of the alphabet” (1999); and “What is the proper characterization of the alphabet? V. Transcendence” (2002).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
