“When visualization tools act as a catalyst to early visual thinking about a relatively unexplored problem, neither the semantics nor the pragmatics of map signs is a dominant factor. On the other hand, syntactics (or how the sign-vehicles, through variation in the visual variables used to construct them, relate logically to one another) are of critical importance.”

— Alan MacEachren

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 368

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Alan MacEachren 23

American geographer 1952

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: Writings on the General Theory of Signs, 1971, p. 301

“A language in the full semiotical sense of the term is any intersubjective set of sign vehicles whose usage is determined by syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical rules.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Variant: The full characterization of a language may now be given: A language in the full semiotic sense of the term is any intersubjective set of sign vehicles whose usage is determined by syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical rules.
Source: Writings on the General Theory of Signs, 1971, p. 48; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 314

“[The special properties of visual perception of data]… is the visual means of resolving logical problems.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Graphics and graphic information processing (1981), p. 16 as cited in: Riccardo Mazza (2004) Introduction to Information Visualisation http://www.dti.supsi.ch/~mazza/infovis_introduction.pdf

“According to Charles W. Morris, syntactics is the relation between a given sign-vehicle and other sign-vehicles. There is a critical distinction here (that many cartographers have missed) between Morris's "syntactics" and the linguistic subcategory of "syntax". While syntax puts emphasis on word order and parsing (i. e., on a linear sequence), syntactics is much broader in scope. Syntactics allows for any kind of among-sign relationships. Morris (1938, p. 16) makes this point explicitly in his statement that there are "syntactical problems in the fields of perceptual signs, aesthetic signs, the practical use of signs, and general linguistics."… At least three kinds of sign relationships seem to fall under Morris's umbrella of syntactics (Posner, 1985, in French; cited in Nöth, 1990, p. 51). These include: (1) ”the consideration of signs and sign combinations so far as they are subject of syntactical rules” (Morris, 1938, p. 14), (2) ”the way in which signs of various classes are combined to form compound signs” (Morris, 1946/1971, p. 367), and (3) ”the formal relations of signs to one another””

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Morris, 1938, p. 6
Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 235; as cited in: Yuri Engelhardt, "Syntactic structures in graphics." Computational Visualistics and Picture Morphology 5 (2007): 23-35.