Among several current approaches to morphology, Natural Morphology is characterized by three general assumptions. First, linguistic signs are based on a general semiotic understanding of language as a cognitive tool specific to human beings. This is couched within C. S. Peirce’s conception of signs as organized according to their constructional properties and manners of referring to their interpretation as diagrams, indexes, and symbols. Second, this semiotic basis provides the heuristic means to assess the naturalness of morphological coding in terms of, among others, diagrammaticity and indexicality. Third, by referring to a semiotically defined morphological naturalness, one can assess the normalcy of a historically given linguistic system as a result of dynamic and partially conflicting systemic and extra-systemic forces (external evidence coming from such areas as language history, acquisition, pathology, or sociolinguistics. This complex picture grasps the speakers’ natural behavior as semiotic animals producing and interpreting complex signs, and at the same time, the impact of the linguistic systems reflecting different interacting and conflicting forces.

The chapter examines the semiotic, cognitive, and functional foundations of Natural Linguistics, highlighting their significance in Natural Phonology and their subsequent adaptation in Natural Morphology and Natural Textlinguistics. The contribution of semiotic principles, particularly of Peircean semiotics, is emphasized as a crucial metatheoretical framework for understanding language. The most influential publications and recent advancements are reviewed. The chapter highlights how semiotic, cognitive, and functional bases can be interdependent, convergent, or conflicting, and that their influence varies across different linguistic subtheories. The impact of semiotic parameters is shown in the gradual diachronic transformation of phonological processes into morphonological rules. Text and discourse structures are also analyzed through the lens of semiotics, with grapholinguistics presenting new opportunities for understanding writing as a secondary semiotic system. In sum, this chapter illustrates the extensive interplay between semiotic, cognitive, and functional factors across linguistic domains, affirming NatLing’s comprehensive approach to understanding the intricacies of language.

Astrobiology, the search for life in the universe, raises critical philosophical questions concerning conceptual vagueness and epistemic uncertainty. The philosophy of astrobiology can be defined as the systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning the potential existence and detection of extraterrestrial life. This chapter explores the philosophical foundations of astrobiology, focusing on how we conceptualize and seek knowledge about life and intelligence beyond Earth. It examines the challenges of defining ‘life’ and ‘intelligence’ in ways that are not constrained by Earth-centric assumptions, emphasizing the problems of analogy, universality, and the limitations of having only one known biosphere. Epistemological issues arise from the difficulty of interpreting ambiguous data, the theory-ladenness of observation, and the risk of misattributing signs of life or intelligence. Astrobiology is above all a cognitive challenge of the terrestrial bio-culturally evolved human mind.

Chapter 5 tackles the meanings and emotions an image can afford through its contents and form. The body of the image refers to the characteristics of the image, its visual features, pictorial composition, and material form, and how those together afford certain meanings and interpretations of the image in a specific moment in its life trajectory. The visual interpretation method is presented then applied on a case example of street poster images.

Legg draws on Charles Peirce’s semiotics to help explain the semantic limitations of genAI software. Early AI developers were stymied by the assumption that meanings are discrete, abstract, and internal and by an approach that disallowed the growth of meaning. Legg describes some of the progress on AI that has been made in recent years but argues that some of its remaining weaknesses stem from a failure to understand that semiosis occurs in three fundamentally different ways: symbolicity, indexicality, and iconicity. Contemporary genAI systems never go beyond symbolicity to instantiate indexical signs, which are required to point to the world external to those systems, and they are not sufficiently constrained by iconic signs, especially those that would bring logical structure. Legg also critically considers claims that genAI will enable new achievements with regard to knowledge and truth, as well as claims that it will further erode our collective grasp on truth. Drawing on Peirce’s realism his view of inquiry as essentially social, Legg explains how we can reconceive reality, truth, and knowledge so as to avoid mistaking the texts created by genAI for genuine knowledge.

This essay explores William James’s debt to Charles Peirce, arguing that this debt is integral to pragmatism’s historical use-value for studies of race and racism. Scholars of race have historically found pragmatism useful because of its anti-foundationalism. A philosophical stance resistant to abstraction and ossification, pragmatism’s emphasis on continuity through adaptation makes it useful for dismantling racial essentialism while preserving the experience of social and historical continuity necessary for the ongoing recognition of disenfranchised groups. In the late nineteenth century, however, pragmatism failed to reckon with the systematic denial of power and representation to racialized subjects. I argue that this failure is inseparable from pragmatism’s weddedness to the concept of experience and that a deep dive into how pragmatists have relied on this concept to negotiate the relationship between mind and body reveals the racial contours of its genealogy. Transforming what for Peirce was a methodological rule for scientific investigation into a theory of Truth, James imagined a world made entirely of subjects rather than objects. In so doing, he also dismantled the dialectical aspect of Peirce’s principle and the semiotics on which it depends. As this essay argues, James’s pragmatism does have potential for interpreting the history and significance of race. This potential, though, lies less in its anti-foundationalism than in its materialism and a reclamation of Peirce’s more dialectical model of embodied consciousness.

In eighteenth-century Britain, insects like fleas and lice not only commonly troubled corporeal existence but also received notice in poetry and prose. In contrast, Fielding’s Tom Jones avoids any mention of insects at all. Why? A neoclassical aesthetic explains Fielding’s omission of those aspects of terrestrial life thought to be unworthy of representation. Grounded in the Great Chain of Being, the novel expresses an androcentric view also observed in poets like Alexander Pope. Fielding’s theological and aesthetic commitments also explain the existence of his little-known satire attacking a significant myrmecological work by his cousin Arthur Gould: according to Fielding’s scathing response, humans alone – not insects like ants – deserve the spotlight. As expressed in his satire and elsewhere, Fielding’s agenda belongs to what biosemiotician Wendy Wheeler has called the “semiotic disenchantment” of the world. It also helps to explain why insects go missing.

The treatment of Rome and its history in Ennius’ Annales has received significant scholarly attention in recent years. This work has shown well that the epic sets the city at the centre of a widening Roman world, thereby making it a cosmic hub of space and time. Such epic transformations also transform perspectives on the past and the present. What of Rome in the rest of Ennius’ wide-ranging literary output? How does the tri- or quadrilingual former Rudian approach his new unelected home and its socio-cultural practices in genres beyond epic? Taking into consideration the representation of (urban) space, monuments, social practices (especially ritual acts, praise, and elite self-presentation), and intersectional conceptions of Roman identity, this chapter examines the ways in which Ennius’ writings construct and reflect Rome qua city and set of cultural values and perspectives. The Scipio, Ambracia, and Sabinae anchor the chapter, but the contribution also uncovers key themes in less expected places, with some comment on the epigrams, Hedyphagetica, and philosophical works.

This chapter considers why conformation systems matter for scholars studying any aspect of human sociality; the importance of the book’s compilation of many hundreds of instances of conformations; how each of the four evolved dispositions for conforming constitutes a niche for the cultural evolution of congruent practices, artifacts, art, and architecture; and the selective forces on cultural practices and institutions in those niches.