From Arousal to Morpheme: Grounding Meaning in Pre-Linguistic Inferential Structures

This paper proposes a biologically grounded, pragmatically oriented account of the emergence of linguistic meaning. I argue that arousal (the physiological state of emotional and motivational activation) can serve as a pre-linguistic foundation for inferential semantic structures, functioning as an "arousal-semantic function": a mapping from phonetic forms to inferred social meanings, constrained by context and relational dynamics. Drawing on empirical work in ethology and cognitive neuroscience, I show that humans and other animals extract actionable social information from arousal-modulated vocalizations, suggesting the existence of a pre-symbolic inferential layer that grounds conventional semantic content. I develop a three-stage model of meaning emergence: (1) expressive emission of arousal-correlated vocal signals; (2) pragmatic interpretation through context-sensitive inferential patterns; (3) conventional stabilization into morphemic units. This account is situated within Brandom’s inferentialist philosophy and Price’s global expressivism, diverging from referentialist theories of meaning. Finally, I outline implications for the design of neuro-symbolic AI systems capable of acquiring inferential roles from embodied social interaction