Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“We may symbolize this difference by saying that the signal relates to its object “horizontally,” whereas the sign relates to it “vertically.” What makes the origin of language of particular interest to us is that the generation of the vertical signification of language from the horizontal, appetitive relationships of the real world may be described in terms of the Girardian triangle of mimetic desire. Normally we imitate each other’s appetitive acts by performing the same action on a different object: when I see you pick an apple, I pick an apple of my own. But since mimetic desire makes me suspect that your apple was better than mine, my gesture and yours are destined to converge one day on the same object. At this point, mimesis is blocked; the appropriative gesture is aborted. The only way to avoid destructive violence is to refocus our attention from the human model to the object toward which his gesture points. Although this unique object of desire cannot itself be reproduced, it may be represented by a reproducible sign of human language. Hence, in the terms of Generative Anthropology, the “aborted gesture of appropriation” becomes the originary sign. But although the mimetic triangle contains all the elements necessary for the emergence of the sign, language as the foundation of the human community must have arisen in a collective event where mimetic tension is intensified by the multiplicity of the participants.”

— Eric Gans, The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language · Spring 1999 · Anthropoetics