Sign Systems Studies  

Dario Martinelli

“Zoosemiotics” was introduced in 1963 by Thomas Albert Sebeok, initially as a compromise between ethological and semiotic research. In the beginning, Sebeok was convinced that “zoosemiotics” had to be used mostly as an umbrella term, uniting different sch... see more

Otto Lehto

The question of cognitive endowment in animals has been fiercely debated in the scientific community during the last couple of decades (for example, in cognitive ethology and behaviourism), and indeed, all throughout the long history of natural philosophy... see more

Gisela Kaplan

It was once thought that solely humans were capable of complex cognition but research has produced substantial evidence to the contrary. Art and music, however, are largely seen as unique to humans and the evidence seems to be overwhelming, or is it? Art ... see more

Karel Kleisner,Marco Stella

Creatures living under the rule of domestication form a communicative union based on shared morphological, behavioural, cognitive, and immunological resemblances. Domestic animals live under particular conditions that substantially differ from the origina... see more

Timo Maran

Approaches to animal communication have for the most part been quite different in semiotics and evolutionary biology. In this context the writings of a leading evolutionary biologist who has also been attracted to semiotics — John Maynard Smith — are an i... see more

Stephen Pain

The present article aims to introduce the field of “Zoorhetorics”, as a particular case of Biorhetorics, earlier introduced by the author in the academic world. A brief explanation will be provided of its aims, methods and models, while particular attenti... see more

Regina Rottner

The complexity and variation of sound emission by members of the animal kingdom, primarily produced by the orders Passeriformes (songbirds), Cetacea (whales), but also reported in species belonging to the Exopterygota (insects) and Carnivora (mammals), ha... see more

William Sayers

Walter of Bibbesworth’s late thirteenth-century versified treatise on French vocabulary relevant to the management of estates in Britain has the first extensive list of animal vocalizations in a European vernacular. Many of the Anglo-Norman French names f... see more

Helena Telkänranta

When animals are trained to function in a human society (for example, pet dogs, police dogs, or sports horses), different trainers and training cultures vary widely in their ability to understand how the animal perceives the communication efforts of the t... see more

Morten Tønnessen

Play behaviour is notorious for constituting a much debated, yet little clarified field of research. In this article, attempts are made to reach conclusions on the relation between human play and the play of other animals (especially cat play), as well as... see more

Kadri Tüür

The object of study in the present article is birds, more precisely the sounds of birds as they are represented in Estonian nature writing. The evolutionary and structural parallels of bird song with human language are reviewed. Human interpretation of bi... see more

Elina Vladimirova

The present article discusses different basic semiotic-scientific postulates regarding mammals’ sign activity. On the one hand, there are arguments denying animals sign activity, according to which mammals are not capable of semantic generalization on the... see more

Carlo Brentani

In the work of Lorenz we find an initial phase of great concordance with Uexkülls theory of animals’ surrounding-world (Umweltlehre), followed by a progressive distance and by the occurrence of more and more critical statements. The moment of greater cohe... see more