In the previous post we traced the moment when behaviour becomes available as a selectable semiotic resource. Through behavioural decoupling, stylisation, and shared construal, signals begin to function within a coordinated field of interpretation.
At that point semiosis has begun.
But something even more significant emerges at the same time. Once signals become selectable, interaction is no longer organised merely through individual behaviours. It becomes organised through a system of possibilities from which those behaviours are selected.
This is the birth of meaning potential.
From signal to system
In a purely behavioural coordination system, signals function as individual events. A cry occurs, a gesture occurs, a display occurs, and the interaction unfolds from there.
Once semiosis emerges, however, each signal begins to exist within a field of alternatives.
A particular vocalisation does not simply occur. It occurs instead of other possible signals that might have been produced in that situation.
The moment signals become selectable resources, interaction acquires a systemic structure. Each instance now draws upon a repertoire of possibilities that could have been selected but were not.
Meaning begins to reside not in isolated signals but in the relations among the alternatives available within the system.
The system–instance relation
This relation between system and instance is fundamental to semiosis.
Each semiotic act is an instance: a particular event in which a signal is selected and interpreted within interaction. But every such act presupposes a system: the structured potential of signals that could be selected.
Even at the earliest stage of semiosis, meaning arises through this relation. A signal construes a situation because it is chosen from a field of possible alternatives that carry different interpretive consequences.
In this sense, the semiotic system functions as a structured potential whose instances actualise selections within that potential.
Semiosis therefore introduces a new form of organisation into the world: interaction now operates through a system of possible meanings.
Why meaning requires a system
This systemic organisation is not an optional feature of meaning. It is a necessary condition for meaning to exist at all.
A single signal, taken in isolation, cannot possess meaning. Meaning arises only when signals stand in contrast to other signals that could have been selected instead.
If a vocalisation could never vary, it could not construe anything. It would simply be a fixed behavioural reaction.
Meaning therefore depends on contrast within a system of alternatives.
This is why semiosis always involves a repertoire: a structured field of possibilities from which participants make selections. Meaning resides in the relational differences among those possibilities.
In other words, meaning does not emerge from signals themselves but from the system that organises them.
The emergence of protosemiotic potential
At the earliest stage of semiosis this system is likely to be quite small. The repertoire of signals may consist of only a handful of resources that coordinate particular kinds of interaction.
Yet even such minimal systems possess the defining property of semiosis: they establish a potential for meaning.
Participants can now select among alternative signals to construe different relations within interaction. Each semiotic act draws upon this emerging system, gradually stabilising the repertoire and expanding its range of possibilities.
Over time the system becomes richer and more differentiated. New signals are incorporated, contrasts multiply, and the potential for meaning expands.
This early stage can be understood as protosemiotic potential: a rudimentary system in which selectable signals already function within a shared field of construal.
The appearance of meaning in the world
The emergence of protosemiotic potential marks a profound transformation in the organisation of interaction.
Before this point, coordination systems regulate behaviour through causal alignment with the environment. After this point, interaction becomes mediated by a structured potential for meaning.
Signals no longer merely trigger responses. They participate in a system through which participants construe their relations to one another and to the situations in which they act.
Meaning has entered the world.
From here the evolutionary trajectory continues. As the semiotic system expands, its internal organisation becomes increasingly complex, eventually giving rise to the next major transformation: protolanguage, in which meaning potential develops into a richer but still unstratified semiotic system.
That development will be the subject of the next stage in this exploration.