Signifier and signified, applying an expansionist conception mind to language evolution

I've been writing some notes an how an expansionist solution (via 1-3P schemes) to the Mind-Body program can be relevant to linguistic signs.

Sign

1. Actual-Signifier
1. Acoustic-Event-Instance classified as a Phoneme-String in a Utterance Situation-Type; or
2. Inscription-Token classified as a Parsed-Character-String (distinguish alphabetic and Chinese character cases)
2. Mental-Signified
1. Mental-Event-Instance (Instance of a Mental-State, a type)
1. A Mental-Sentence (at type, a Mental-State), constructed from lexical types in a mental lexicon using the combining rules of syntax with to generate a Shared Information State
2. Intentional-Object (the extramental situation of a cognized situation-type)
1. The propositional content of the mental sentence
2. Further constrained by the pragmatic situation, where speaker and hearer have Desires, Volitions and Commitments as they use Sentences in speech acts
   
3. Scheme of Individuation
1. 3P Scheme for situations where all individuals are physical
1. Scheme applied to concrete physical situations, the immediate utterance context
2. Scheme applied to possible physical situations, e.g. planning for the future or recovering an uncertain past
2. 1-3P Scheme where some individuals are Mental-States (Sign-using Agent uses a propositional attitude verb to characterize the cause of behavior -- belief, desire, plan -- of another Agent)
1. Scheme applied to immediate situation involving concrete persons with souls, the intelocutor or directly observed people
2. Scheme applied to possible situations involving persons with souls
1. Future situations, e.g. plans involving people, the people in the past and the causes of their behavior
2. Recovering uncertain past situations involving people and their behavior
3. Fictional situations

Case 1: Spoken Utterrances about Immediate Concrete Situation, No Mental States involved

1. Spoken Utterance, Assertive
1. Acoustic Event (channel is the air)
2. Phoneme String (generation at source and recognition at receiver)
3. Sincerity conditions involve the Volitional Act of the Speaker
4. 3P Scheme of Individuation includes the Language Code shared by Speaker and Hearer

Case 2: Speech Acts involving the Desires, Volitions and Commitments of Interlocutors
- propositional content involves only 3P Scheme
- conditions of satisfaction involve mental states of the 1st-Speaker; replies may involve the mental states of the Hearer-2nd-Speaker


Case 3: Written Communication Acts about purely physical situations

1. The writing situation
2. The reading situation
3. The described situation
1. Concrete situation of writer
2. Concrete situation of reader (e.g. a manual with a task description)
3. Possible situations remote from reader and writer
1. Fictional situations

Case 4: Spoken Assertive Utterances about Human Behavior and Mental Causes


Case n: Written Communication Acts about physical-intentional situations


Animals with nervous systems can control motor schemas
- usually routine motor patterns
- sometimes involving selection between alternative motor-responses
- generally reflexive or instinctive, pro-volitional choice not higher cognitive Volition
- ingesting food, avoiding pain, acquiring prey, fleeing predators, mating behaviors, grooming behaviors

Animals with eyes and other sensory organs (molluscs, insects, vertebrates)
- neurally generate a percept
- percept-schemas can modulate behavior routine
- information-use behavior, where perception classifies a situation for selecting action
- this is a information-mediated feedback cycle, the nervous system is an analog control which internally governs its set points (constrained by biological survival and function)

Social animals classify the behavior of conspecifics (as well as prey, predators and commensals)

1. gestural and vocal displays create a shared 1-3P scheme to classify display behaviors
2. A mutually understood display carries a shared information state between producer and receiver
3. A display is a Signifier, the Shared Information State (including the mental types that combined to create it, and the occurrent representation of the state in working memory) is the Signified
4. The Signified is itself an intentional mental state, that has the property of directedness to some extramental situation

The extramental situation classified as a Shared Information State may be concrete, but may also have a possible situation as referent.

How did hominid memory evolve with language? Birds already have something like phonological organization of birdsong, and can recognize songs as well, presumably by their "phonemes". But they may have only a fixed repertoire of pattern schemas, perhaps nothing as productive as human speech (which is recursively generative). Also, the Signifier of a bird's song apparently has no signified, there is no lexical semantics behind the musical phrases of the song to construct a shared information state.

Presumably, the specialized vocalizations of primates (hawk-warning call vs. snake-warning call produces run-down vs. run-up behaviors) create some kind of shared information state. This could be part of the ready structure innovatively applied to semantically enable language in hominids.

Stage 1. Let us imagine a hominid species that can consistently make referring vocalizations (noun phrases), but does not yet have verbs and predications. The hominids can classify individuals using arbitary vocal signifiers. The culturally acquired repertoire of Signs is a shared scheme. it may be only a 3P scheme.

Stage 2. Let us imagine that in addition to referring vocalizations, the hominids evolve certain basic verbs to classify non-mental actions. Perhaps they use learn the 5 constructions often used by human children, and this protolanguage includes the 14 basic verbs observed (by Adele Goldberg) in those constructions:

put	X causes Y to move Z
go	X moves Y
do	X acts on Y
make	X causes Y to become Z
give	X causes Y to receive Z

Similar to go: get-1, fall, come, look, live, sit
Similar to put: get-2, take, do-2, pick
Similar to give: tell

These verbs already involve the intentional action of agents, but do not yet individuates their mentals state that might be causing their behavior.

Presumably the hominids with this 14-verb language already have a theory of other minds, they are normal social mammals not autistic. However, they still lack a vocabulary of pick out unseen mental causes as individuals.

Stage 3. Let us not imagine that the use of language of this hominid species evolves to include words like: believes, wants, plans, intends, sees, hears, requests, and promises.

How does the structure of cognitive memory of this hominid species have to evolve through each stage?