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Extremes of relation between expression and content can be iden-
tified, and a progression can be traced between them. At one extreme,
the sequence cut can have a multitude of signifieds: for Vološinov,
“
Multiplicity of meanings is the constitutive feature of
[the primitive]
word
” (1929/1986, 101). In this understanding, the primitive word was
not distinguished from the utterance or abstracted from its place between
speakers. For an individual speaker, brevity and multivalency can reduce
labor in the production of utterances, without demanding compensating
labor in interpretation by that speaker, particularly if there is a power rela-
tion over the hearer, such as the slave, or “
instrumentum vocale
” (Marx
1867/1976, 303n-304n). In a speech circuit, or with the circulation of
linear written messages, speakers are also hearers and have an interest
in reducing the work in disambiguating multivalency in interpretation,
bringing it into balance with work in production. Multivalency can still
remain, particularly when the word is extracted from the speech circuit or
written message. At an antithetical extreme, a signified could have many
signifiers, although this would demand unnecessary labor both from
source and destination. Saussure strongly questioned the existence of full
synonymy, a manifestation of a signified with more than one signifiers
(1916/1983, 162). A nomenclature with a unitary relation of signifier to
signified would occupy an intermediate position between two extremes.
The fuller example has revealed that human understanding and compo-
sition of written language may be highly intractable computationally, even
given sharp differentiations between alternative senses and with compre-
hension and selection reduced to a rather objectified form. Derived from
a monolingual dictionary, the paradigm for the infinitive form (
stand for
)
may give a sense of organization, clarity, and strictly limited number, and
also of words or messages for selection that await combination in the
syntagma or message. The monolingual dictionary has been regarded as
a practical anticipation of the Saussurean model of language; the head-
word and definition are analogous to signifier and signified, and the net-
work image of the semantics of a language is exemplified by the mutual
definition of words. The collections of syntagmas revealed the diversity
of speech, which may have been disguised by the appearance of finished
order given by the collection of paradigms, and they indirectly testified to
the abstracting and ordering efforts of lexicographers and theorists. From
