Moving on to the first trichotomy of sign types in “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”:
CP 2.244: According to the first division, a Sign may be termed a Qualisign, a Sinsign, or a Legisign. A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign. [As a Sign, this “quality” must be a correlate of a triadic relation with its Object and Interpretant, “by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible Interpretant” (CP 2.242). Yet it cannot act as a sign until it is embodied, i.e. until it becomes involved in at least a dyadic relation, and thus enters the universe of existence. Yet its significance is its quality (not its embodiment), and qualities being monadic, there is no real difference between Sign and Object (or Interpretant either). So I think we might call this a doubly degenerate kind of triadic relation, where the Sign is virtually self-representing, and self-determining as its own Interpretant. Compare the “self-sufficient” point on a map which Peirce offers as an example of doubly degenerate Thirdness in his third Harvard Lecture, EP2:162.) Or, since this degeneracy is relative, we can say that the Qualisign is degenerate relative to the Sinsign and to the Legisign (just as the Icon is degenerate relative to the Index and the genuine Symbol, according to Peirce in both the third Harvard lecture of 1903 and “New Elements” of 1904). On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph:] 245. A Sinsign (where the syllable sin is taken as meaning “being only once,” as in single, simple, Latin semel, etc.) is an actual existent thing or event which is a sign. It can only be so through its qualities; so that it involves a qualisign, or rather, several qualisigns. But these qualisigns are of a peculiar kind and only form a sign through being actually embodied. [Evidently it is the involvement of qualisigns in a Sinsign — which, I suppose, constitutes their embodiment — that makes them “peculiar,” because a “normal” Qualisign is disembodied (and does not act as a Sign). But perhaps this will be clarified by the definition of Legisign, which I’ll leave for the next post.] Gary f.
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