The part of the sign Saussure calls the ‘concept’ or ‘meaning’ (mental impression/association of the ‘thing’) he named, ’signified.’ The part he calls the ‘sound-image’ (the mental ‘linguistic sign’ given to the ‘thing’) he named the ‘signifier’. As Saussure explains, the connection between all ‘signifiers’ which are ‘sound images’ or ‘linguistic signs’ and what they are signifying – their signified object or concept – is arbitrary. In other words, there is not necessarily any logical connection between the two. | Sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. Also is the union of the thing denoted on the mind. Peirce's basic claim that signs consist of three inter-related parts: a sign (representamen) sustitution of something, an object that is the thing that the representamen refers, and an interpretant that is the interpretation any mind make of a sign. Peirce distinguished semiotics between three types of signs: Icon, Index and Symbol. The Icon is the representation of something (object), index show something about a thing, being physically connected with them. (Is the link between the sign and the object) and a symbol is universal context, meaning by usage. | ROLAND BARTHES Barthes define language as a social institution and a system of value that resists the modificiations of an individual thats why is a social institution too. signifier+signified=sign He define based on Saussere the signified as a mental representation of the “thing”, a concept. In the case of the signifier is the image, sound, object, etc… It is the material form that is developed in our minds as a memory. in other words is a mediator to handle the words, images, and objects in the sign equation. | JOSEPH GREENBERG Based on the functionalism the study of the language that see the functions of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures he worked on the Linguistic typology that is a subfield of linguistic that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Also describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages. Greenberg grouped the hundreds of African languages into four families, which he dubbed Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo and Kohisan. |