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meanings, a meaning likely will be unique—recoverable from its illustra-
tive display and open to elucidation, but not necessarily easily subject to
decomposition—unless the meaning is deliberately compounded from
simpler ideas.
On the model of singularity of meaning, synonymy—equivalence in
signifieds between words—may occur only temporarily as a symptom of
structural change. The observation that names have many ideas but ideas
have few names was itself made in connection with questioning the exist-
ence of full synonymy:
Words are seldom exactly synonimous; a new term was not introduced, but
because the former was thought inadequate. (Johnson 1755/1982, 15)
Similarly, Saussure noted, “a language dislikes maintaining two signals
for a single idea” (1916/1983, 162). Saussure often viewed language as
an objectified autonomous force (“a language dislikes . . .”), in contrast to
the earlier view of language as a product of human activity—“a new term
was not introduced.” The idea of absence of full synonymy is consistent
with, or even a reasonable extension of, the idea that a word's meanings
are produced by difference from other meanings in the language.
Therefore, word meaning is regarded as produced by human mental
labor on the interaction of syntagma with paradigm. Words characteristi-
cally have many meanings and meanings may be singular, indicated by
definitions but not necessarily easily further decomposed or reducible to
simple equivalences.
Phrase
A crucial contrast emerges when considering the signification of syntag-
mas more extensive than the word, such as the phrase or the sentence.
Similar forces of human mental labor acting on the interaction of syn-
tagma and paradigm continue to apply, but their effects are different in
the extended syntagma. Since the choice of signifieds is restrained by the
further syntagma included, extending the syntagma beyond the word
would be expected to reduce the multivalency of the constituent words.
Indeterminacy— different interpretations—could remain. Again, full-text
phrase searching would experientially confirm the reduction of multiva-
lency and the persistence of indeterminacy.
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