Kalevi Kull

The bibliography provides a list of all known English-language publications by Juri M. Lotman (including in co-authorship and reprints), in chronologicalorder, described de visu. The first English translation of J. Lotman’s work appeared in 1973, altogether there is 109 entries in the list. The bibliography demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the translations were published in the context of slavistics, whereas after 2000 Lotman’s work starts to appear in the anthologies of general semiotics.

The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studiesin general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Special attention is paid to the potential of cultural semiotics of Tartu–Moscow school for the analysis of landscapes and the possibilities held by a dynamic, dialogic and holistic landscape definition for the development of ecosemiotics.

The article deals with the relationships between the concepts of life process and sign process, arguing against the simplified equation of these concepts. Assuming that organism (and its particular case — cell) is the carrier of what is called ‘life’, we attempt to find a correspondent notion in semiotics that can be equalled to the feature of being alive. A candidate for this is the textual process as a multiple sign action. Considering that biological texts are generally non-linguistic, the concept of biotext should be used instead of ‘text’ in biology.

We develop here a semiotic model of evolution. We point out the role of confusion and choice as a condition for semiosis, which is a precondition for semiotic learning and semiotic adaptation. Semiosis itself as interpretation and decision-making between options requires phenomenal present. The body structure of the organism is largely a product of former semiosis. The organism’s body together with the structure of the ecosystem serves also as a scaffolding for the sign processes that carry on the ontogenetic cycle and the organisms’ behaviour, providing the experience-based channels for decision making in the indeterminate situations of choice. The stability and persistence of ontogenesis and behaviour are based on the plasticity, or the multiviality of organic dynamics. The same plasticity or multivial dynamics is providing the material for further potential evolution. Evolution has occurred when some change becomes irreversible via its stabilization, and it usually means a modification of existing constraints, or scaffoldings. Some examples of these processes are described in the article

Asking, whether plants have semiosis, the article gives a review of the works on phytosemiotics, referring to the tradition in botany that has seen plants as non-mechanic systems. This approach can use the concept of biological need as the primary holistic process in living systems. Demonstrating the similarity between the need and semiosis, it is concluded that sign is a meronomic entity. A distinction between five levels of sign systems is proposed: cellular, vegetative, animal, linguistic, and cultural. Vegetative sign systems are those which are responsible for the morphogenesis and differentiation within an organism, thus belonging to all multicellular organisms.

The article gives a historical overview of the institutional development of semiotics in Estonia during two centuries, and describes briefly its current status. The key characteristics of semiotics in Estonia include: seminal role of two world-level classics of semiotics from the University of Tartu, Juri Lotman and Jakob von Uexküll; the impact of Tartu–Moscow school of semiotics, with a series of summer schools in Kääriku in 1960s and the establishment of semiotic study of culture; the publication of the international journal Sign Systems Studies, since 1964; the development of biosemiotics, notably together with colleagues from Copenhagen; teaching semiotics as a major in bachelor, master, and doctoral programs in the University of Tartu, since 1994; a plurality of institutions — in addition to the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, several supporting semiotic institutions have been established since 1990s; and a wide scope of research in various branches of semiotics, including theoretical studies, empirical studies, and applied semiotics projects on governmental and other request.

The present article is framed within the biosemiotic glossary project as a way to address common terminology within biosemiotic research. The glossary integrates the view of the members of the biosemiotic community through a standard survey and a literature review. The concept of ‘semiotic threshold’ was first introduced by Umberto Eco, defining it as a boundary between semiotic and non-semiotic areas. We review here the concept of ‘semiotic threshold’, first describing its denotation within semiotics via an examination on the history of the concept, its synonyms, antonyms, etymology, usage in other languages and context in which it is used. Then we present a general overview of the survey among researchers, analyzing the difference in responses for the concept of ‘lower semiotic threshold’ and related concepts. From the answers we also review the difference between the general usage of ‘semiotic threshold’ versus its specific use within biosemiotics, and attempt to make a general synthesis of the concept taking into account what we have learned from the survey and the literature review.

The interview with one of the founders of the Tartu–Moscow school, semiotician Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (b. 1929) from August 2010, describes V. V. Ivanov’s opinions of several scholars and their work (including Evgenij Polivanov, Mikhail Bakhtin, Andrej Kolmogorov, Nikolaj Marr etc.), his relationships with his father Vsevolod Ivanov, as well as V. V. Ivanov’s views on the past and future of semiotics, with some emphasis on neurosemiotics, zoosemiotics, semiotics of culture, cybernetics, history of linguistics, study and protection of small languages. The interview also deals with V. V. Ivanov’s book Even and Odd.

The paper focuses on the semiotic principles of the organisation of ecosystems, attempting to find concepts that point to relations and not to elements. (1) Consortium (the term introduced by Johannes Reinke around 1873) can be defined as a group of organisms connected via (sign) relations, or groups of interspecific semiosic links in biocoenosis. The consortial relations include trophic and topic relations, both implying a recognition (identification) of the object by an organism involved (these, i.e., are sign relations). These relations are ecologically inheritable. (2) Umwelt (the term introduced by Jakob von Uexküll around 1909) can be defined as a set of relations an organism has in an ecosystem (as in a semiosphere). The formation of an umwelt is dependent on the modelling system of the organism. (3) Biophony (the term introduced by Bernie Krause around 2000) denotes the coordination of inter- and intra-species relations in a soundscape of a biological community. This can be seen as a special case of Komposition as defined by Jakob and Thure von Uexküll. (4) Ecological code (as introduced, e.g. by Alexander Levich around 1977) can be defined as the set of (sign) relations (regular irreducible correspondences) characteristic to an entire ecosystem. We also mention the concepts of ecomones and coactones (introduced by Marcel Florkin in 1965) as the substances which are responsible for mediation of ecological inter-individual relations. All the relations as sign-relations evidently imply both a static or structuralist description (in terms of codes), and a processual description (in terms of semiosis carried on by interpretation). We conclude that all the above mentioned concepts can be viewed as conceptually connected and are suitable for semiotic description of biological communities