The Autonomy of the Linguistic Sign

Abstract

Suppose that, in a prehistoric burial chamber in south-west Cornwall, I discover the following marks carved on one of the granite slabs which hold up the roof: I ask myself: arc they merely marks made at random by a stonemason testing a chisel, or do they collectively make up an utterance in a language whose script this is? To ask this is to ask a question about history. But it is a question which implicitly suggests a prior question of a different and philosophically puzzling sort. What is it for a sequence of marks, or for that matter a sequence of vocal noises, to ‘be’ or to ‘constitute’ an utterance in a language?