Maintains that the study of signs is divided between those scholars who use the Saussurian binary sign (semiology) and those who prefer the Peirce tripartite sign (semiotics). Concludes that neither the Saussurian nor Peircian analysis methods can produce a semiotic interpretation based on a hierarchy of the text's various components. (CFR)

Discusses several philosophies of linguistics and semiotics that debate the importance of words and their relationship to signs, language as the primary modeling system, and the historical primacy of verbal versus visual communication. Describes human communication as both language-based and nonverbal, both aspects inviting arbitrary and abstract…

This study is designed to help provide an understanding of the role semiosis plays in information processes. The object of study is the structure of various types of signs, and a determination of the relationship between sign structure and information properties. A review of the theory of sign structure is followed by an examination of syntactic…