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Linguists often use the terms
phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
and
morphemes A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone a ...
to refer, respectively, to the figurae and the signifiers of human languages. The division of the stream of speech into meaningful morphemes plus their further subdivision into meaningless elements is known as the
double articulation In linguistics, double articulation, duality of patterning, or duality is the fundamental language phenomenon consisting of the use of combinations of a small number of meaningless elements (sounds, that is, phonemes) to produce a large number of m ...
. This
duality of patterning In linguistics, double articulation, duality of patterning, or duality is the fundamental language phenomenon consisting of the use of combinations of a small number of meaningless elements (sounds, that is, phonemes) to produce a large number of m ...
of language is one of the few facts of language which most schools of linguistics can agree on. Occasionally, two morphemes can combine in an arbitrary way into a new morpheme, as in double names such as ''Mary-Alice, John-Paul'', and ''Sarah-Jean,'' creating a kind of triple articulation. English speakers recognize ''Mary'' and ''Alice'' as parts of the name ''Mary-Alice,'' yet they understand that a woman of that name is in no way a combination of two other women. But neither are double given names typical of English, nor are surnames meaningless, since surnames usually identify a family relationship. As far as the combination of meaningful elements is concerned, there is much less agreement on what constitutes a syntagm (e.g. ''foot-ball, I-am'') and whether any such syntax is universal. In theory, any sign could be composed of figurae, but care must be taken in distinguishing between the control-number-like function of figurae (as in the individual digits of a telephone extension) and the syntax-like function of meaning constituents (as in the area code of a full telephone number). For example, the symbols for the lines of the New York City subway system are composed of very elementary parts, e.g., letters or numbers and colors. While the assignment of letters to trains is arbitrary, and colors are arbitrarily assigned to various avenues in Manhattan, the combination of a letter or number and color is not arbitrary. That is, the symbol for the A Train has to be blue, since it runs along Eighth Avenue and all other Eighth Avenue train symbols are blue. Therefore, these colors cannot be considered figurae. On the other hand, the flags of a dozen countries consist of three horizontal bars, distinguished by their colors. It can be said that the colors and bars form a system of signifiers, consisting of the color figurae in a vertical order. For example, the flag of Russia is made up of a white, a blue, and a red bar, from top to bottom, whereas the flag of Estonia consists of a blue, a black and a white bar. From the point of view of a
vexillologist Vexillology ( ) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general.Smith, Whitney. ''Flags Through the Ages and Across the World'' New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Print. The word is a synth ...
, the colors have no meaning until they are grouped together and form the national symbol. Although white, blue and red may be "national colors" of Russia, combined in a different order they form the flag of Luxembourg. In reality, most national flags do not conform to the three-horizontal-band pattern. Furthermore, national flags vary somewhat in their horizontal and vertical proportions, and shades of colors can differ. Nevertheless, this logical analysis of flags into horizontal-color-bar figurae, though not exact, would probably be arrived at by almost anyone comparing these 12 national symbols. But it is also possible to over-analyze signs. For example, a television picture of a flag would consist of thousands of meaningless pixels. A recording of speech could be digitalized on a CD into millions of meaningless bits. Neither of these mechanical divisions could be considered figurae. It would seem, then, that since signs are defined as entities recognized by sentient beings (including many animal species), the constituents of signs, figurae, must also be easily recognizable as entities, even though they have no meaning in themselves. It probably requires lot of specialization or intelligence to mentally process figurae, since it demands not only the disassociation of the characteristics of a symbol with those of its referent, but this disassociation has to be repeated for each figura that comprises the arbitrary symbol. Figurae have not yet been recognized in any non-human natural communication system. Although the honeybee
waggle dance Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nect ...
may involve some arbitrary symbols, they are combined with non-arbitrary ones, much like the subway line symbols.


References

Cybernetics Linguistics Semiotics Philosophy of language