Quasi-Natural Signification

Merleau-Ponty's phrase at The Problem of Speech (PbP) p. 199, revisited in the third Nature course of 1959–60: an "order of quasi-natural significations" of language — the breakdown of the strict bifurcation between the natural sign (whose meaning is given by physical or biological necessity) and the conventional sign (whose meaning is arbitrary stipulation). The linguistic sign is neither purely conventional nor purely natural; it bears traces of natural meaning — or, if one prefers, of a second-natural meaning. Kee 2025 §2 records this as one of the late-emerging themes that prevent a single "specificity of language" from being located: conventionality, like diacriticality, is not unique to language but breaks down within Saussure's own thought (PbP 87f.; cf. 2010a, b p. 65). The figure connects PbP forward to MP's late Nature lectures, where it is reformulated as a "quasi-natural life of language" (2003 pp. 226f.) within the broader doctrine that nature has a tendency "to generate differentiation and meaning from itself."

Key Points

PbP 199 is the locus: "the suggestion of an 'order of quasi-natural significations' of language." This is the closing gesture of PbP — the lecture course ends with this opening onto a problematic that PbP cannot itself develop.
Nature III revisits: 2003 pp. 226f. — MP entertains a "quasi-natural life of language" between purely natural and artificialist, conventional symbolisms. This is the Nature course version of the figure. The 1959–60 development is the late form; PbP is the early formulation.
Saussurean sign reconsidered: in Saussurean orthodoxy, the linguistic sign is conventional / arbitrary — there is no natural relation between signifier and signified. PbP 87f. (per Kee p. 86) records MP's observation that the sign is not purely unmotivated; it carries traces of natural meaning. This breakdown is, MP holds, motivated in Saussure's own thought. The doctrine is therefore not anti-Saussurean but a more-rigorous-than-Saussure reading of Saussure.
The natural / conventional opposition is what breaks down: the bifurcation between natural and conventional signs is what fails. In its place: a gradient of motivation, with purely natural signs at one pole, purely arbitrary signs at the other, and language somewhere in the middle. The middle is what "quasi-natural" names.
"Second-natural" as a possible reformulation: PbP 88, 199, 201 — Kee p. 86 records the alternative phrasing. Second-nature is the cultural sedimentation that becomes naturalized — habits, gestures, languages that are not biologically given but feel as immediate and necessary as if they were. The linguistic sign's apparent unmotivatedness is second-natural: it has been instituted through a long history but is no longer experienced as instituted.
The figure is not a return to natural-language doctrines: MP is not claiming that words are onomatopoeically grounded or biologically given. He is claiming that between pure naturalness and pure arbitrariness there is a quasi-natural zone in which language's sedimented institution has become functionally indistinguishable from its natural-feeling immediacy. This is a sedimentation-doctrine reading of conventionality, not a naturalisation of language.

What the Concept Does

The quasi-natural-signification figure does three pieces of work:

It defeats one of the candidate "specificities of language." Kee §2 surveys candidate specificities (diacritical structure, conventionality, sedimentation, relation to truth and the past) and shows each is either shared with other modes of expression or extendable to other modes given different histories. Conventionality — the candidate that says language is unique because its signs are arbitrary — fails because conventionality breaks down: linguistic signs are quasi-natural, not purely conventional. So one more candidate falls; one more reason to give up the silver-bullet account of linguistic specificity.

It connects PbP forward to the Nature lectures. The "quasi-natural life of language" in Nature III is the late development of the PbP 199 gesture. MP's late ontology integrates language with nature — language is not a separate cultural domain set off against the natural world but part of nature's tendency "to generate differentiation and meaning from itself." Per Kee p. 86: this is "underwritten by a tendency of nature to generate differentiation and meaning from itself."

It supplies the textual base for one of the late-MP claim candidates (cf. the Kee 2025 extraction note's Pass 3 Part D — the pbp-as-pivot-from-language-monograph-to-late-ontology candidate). PbP 199's "order of quasi-natural significations" is literally the closing gesture of PbP; if PbP is the pivot to the late ontology, then this gesture is the pivot's pivot.

What It Rejects

Saussurean orthodoxy on the unmotivated sign: not as wrong, but as too-strict. The linguistic sign is less arbitrary than Saussure's clean bifurcation suggests; the bifurcation breaks down within Saussure's own thought.
Onomatopoeic / natural-language doctrines (in the strong form): MP is not claiming that words resemble their referents or that all language is iconic. The doctrine is more subtle: language is quasi-natural because long-instituted, not because biologically grounded.
The strict natural / conventional bifurcation in semiotics generally: Pierce's icon / index / symbol typology, when read as exhaustive and exclusive, would resist the quasi-natural register. The figure is closer to symbol with iconic / indexical residue than to a clean classification.
The view of language as a separate cultural domain set off against the natural world: MP's late ontology integrates language with nature; the quasi-natural sign is one form of that integration.

Stakes

If language is quasi-natural in PbP's sense and in Nature III's sense, then several pieces of MP's late ontology realign:

The bifurcation between culture and nature (one of the perennial problems in MP's corpus, cf. the *Nature* lectures generally) is dissolved at the level of the sign. Language is part of nature's tendency to differentiate and signify, not a separate cultural superstructure.
The "specificity of language" question, already weakened by the diacritical-structure argument (V&I 132), is further weakened by the conventionality argument. By the end of Kee's §2, no candidate specificity survives intact.
The transition to MP's late ontology (vertical / wild being; wild-being) is prefigured by PbP 199 and developed in Nature III. The continuity is one of the threads that authorizes the pbp-as-pivot claim candidate (cf. Kee §4).
The figure connects forward to the V&I 1968 p. 155 image: language as "the voice of no one, since it is the very voice of the things, the waves, and the forests." The "things, waves, forests" are nature; language is their voice; the natural / conventional bifurcation collapses at this final ontological level.

Connections

extends the natural-symbolism figure beyond perception into language proper
is the late form of the breakdown of natural / conventional sign in *PoP*'s linguistic-gesture chapter ("there are neither any natural signs nor any purely conventional signs," PoP 1945 Pt I Ch VI)
is one of the candidate-failures Kee §2 surveys in his negative argument against a single "specificity of language"
is the textual hinge between PbP and *Nature* III — PbP 199's "order of quasi-natural significations" → Nature 2003 pp. 226f.'s "quasi-natural life of language"
is the linguistic register of nature's tendency "to generate differentiation and meaning from itself" (Kee p. 86, paraphrasing late MP)
is the condition of intelligibility of MP's late image of language as "voice of the things, the waves, and the forests" (V&I p. 155)
contrasts with strict Saussurean unmotivatedness (PbP 87f.; cf. 2010a, b p. 65)
is the philological middle term between PbP's middle-period treatment of language and the late ontology of wild-being

Open Questions

Is "quasi-natural" the best translation? The French is presumably quasi-naturel. The "quasi" carries a hedging implication that may not capture the strength of MP's claim. "Second-natural" is sometimes used (Kee p. 86); other translators may prefer "para-natural" or "naturalised."
What is the precise relation between PbP 199 and Nature III? The Nature III development is six years later; whether MP's view deepens, transforms, or merely reformulates is an open question.
Does the figure imply a doctrine of natural meaning in nature itself? The 2003 Nature hint that nature has "a tendency to generate differentiation and meaning from itself" is one of the most ontologically loaded claims MP makes. Whether this is metaphor or literal commitment is contested. See wild-being and barbarian-principle for the broader landscape.
How does quasi-natural signification relate to Husserl's Ursprung der Geometrie on the origin of meaning in human history? Husserl's late thought on the historical institution of ideal meanings is one possible influence; the comparison would clarify whether MP's "quasi-natural" is an institutional-historical figure or a natural-ontological one (or both).

Synthetic Claims

live claim, see claims#pbp-as-pivot-from-language-monograph-to-late-ontology — the "order of quasi-natural significations" closing gesture at PbP 199 is one of the interior signs of the language pivot: the language-as-such question collapses; the language-within-natural-meaning question opens; Nature III's "quasi-natural life of language" (2003 pp. 226f.) is the late development.

Sources

kee-2025-foreign-languages-phenomenology — §2 (Kee p. 86). Anchors at PbP 88, 199, 201, 211; cf. 2010a, b p. 65; 1964a (Signs) p. 39; Nature (2003) pp. 226f. Kee fn 21 records the Nature III development. The "voice of no one… voice of the things, the waves, and the forests" (V&I 1968 p. 155, qtd. Kee p. 86) is the final ontological image to which the figure points.
merleau-ponty-2003-nature — Nature III (1959–60), pp. 226f. — the development of the "quasi-natural life of language" within the broader doctrine of nature's tendency to generate differentiation and meaning from itself.