The role of the dispute about the nature of content- figurae in structural semantics in semiotics’ history: Hjelmslev, Jakobson, and Eco

Abstract

The debate on the semantic analysis of both lexical and grammatical forms has been salient since the early days of the institutionalisation of semiotics, as fundamental to the theoretical and methodological curriculum of this disciplinary domain. In this debate, the concept of content-figurae, or semantic traits, plays a major role. The well-established sources for this concept and the corresponding method of analysis are the works of Hjelmslev and Jakobson, mediated through Umberto Eco’s thinking. In Eco’s framework, the idea of content-figurae is interpreted as that of ‘semantic primitives, and on that ground, its epistemological foundation and methodological efficacy are refuted. In this article, I try to relate Eco’s semiotic position to Hjelmslev’s and Jakobsons’s positions in linguistic (grammatical) semantics, discussing their principles of semantic analysis of grammatical forms from the perspective of the institutionalisation of semiotics as a disciplinary domain.