Abstract
In this paper I discuss why Peircean semiotic is important and can be fruitful for the contemporary theory of cognitive approaches to music, music learning and the theory of embodied cognition in general. Firstly, I analyze a situation described in Peirce's writings involving the invention of a new cognitive pidgin (and the emergence of a new habitualization) following hearing loss.
I argue that an inferential, naturalized semiotic framework that goes beyond any mind vs. body, nature vs. nurture binarisms, or mechanistic vs. mysterianistic explanations, may be seen as a general theoretical background that interconnects various strands of empirical research on mimetics and embodied cognition in this field. In the end I propose a conceptual path from structuralism to Peircean semiotics to the assemblage theory of music cognition.