Based on his field of competence Sebeok tended to reject the experiments on the putative linguistic abilities of apes, such as those described by David Premack, assuming the existence of a deeper, more universal and more meaningful underlying substrate: the “semiotic function”.
In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Sebeok was the editor-in-chief of the journal "Semiotica", the leading periodical in the field, from its establishing in 1969, until 2001. He was also the editor of the book series "Approaches to Semiotics" (over 100 volumes), and the "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics".
After Sebeok's death, his rich book collection on biosemiotics has been transferred to Estonia, and belongs to the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu.
Sebeok award
The "Sebeok fellow" award is the highest honor given by the Semiotic Society of America. The complete list of Sebeok fellows (with year of awarding): 1. David Savan (1992) 2. John Deely (1993) 3. Paul Bouissac (1996) 4. Jesper Hoffmeyer (2000) 5. Kalevi Kull (2003) 6. Floyd Merrell (2005)External links
- Indiana University School of Library and Information Science Press Release: Thomas A. Sebeok, Senior Fellow at SLIS, Passes On Obituary
- The Estonian connection by Thomas A. Sebeok
- Thomas Albert Sebeok: "Biologist Manqué" by John Deely
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Last updated on Sunday October 05, 2008 at 23:22:46 PDT (GMT -0700)
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