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1. General information on SYMBOLS.com 2. Awards 3. The definition of "symbol" 1. General information on SYMBOLS.com SYMBOLS.com is the on-line version of Carl G Liungman's book "Thought Signs" (IOS Press, ISBN 90 5199 197 5). The subtitle of the book is "The semiotics of Symbols---Western Non-pictoral Ideograms", which fairly describes its contents. A CD-ROM version is available for downloading from this site. Click here to send comments directly to the author of this work, or to the webmaster. The site has been selected by ...
 The book Thought Signs was highly praised when it first was published in USA:
The word symbol is derived from the Greek word symbolon. In ancient Greece it was a custom to break a slate of burned clay into several pieces and distribute them within the group. When the group reunited the pieces were fitted togheter (Greek symbollein). This confirmed the members belonging to the group. An ideogram is a special type of symbol, a graphic sign for an idea or concept. For instance, the graph
represents the G-clef in musical notation and the swith for treble range on sound reproducing appliances. It is therefore an ideogram. Alpabethic letters are not considered ideograms proper in this work. But as the first letter in the alphabet A not only is a sign for a specific sound, but also denotes the idea of something that comes first. Consider expressions like "A grade" and "A-team". A may therefore be regarded as a sign. A sign is called iconic if it has some perceivable likeness to what it denotes. In the opposite case, it is called aniconic. However, whether iconic or aniconic, graphical symbols and signs that are not pictures of easily recognized objects are called non-pictoral. These non-pictoral symbols and signs are the subject matter of SYMBOLS.com. |
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