About the nature of signs: a cultural and historical perspective

The article discusses the nature of the three main types of signs - iconic, indexes and symbols. The central problem of this article is the nature of motivation in establishing the designation relationship for these types of signs. To identify the nature of primary motivation in primitive pre-logical thinking for iconic signs and index signs, an appeal to the law of participation formulated by L. Levi-Bruhl is proposed. Modern studies of cognitive processes and work in the field of phonosemantic to a certain extent confirm this conclusion. The appearance of purely conventional signs symbols is associated with the development of abstract thinking. The term “symbol” in semiotics and in the historical and cultural tradition has fundamentally different meanings.