Uddrag fra Propositions, [Nice1951] 046-0040

5/51 to define the relation in question (which for want of a name may he called ’’participation”); for the are many other semantic relations answering to the same definition : in fact superordination in syntax (as usually understood) normally answers to prominence in semantics. Many other struc- tural terms lie ready to hand for the narrowing of the definition : trans- itive and intransitive in the logistic sense, commutational and permuta- tional in the glossematic senses, and so on. (For instance the relations expressed by the cases are normally permutable, not commutable). Such terms have however hardly yet been exploited for the structural defini- tion of relations, in the field of linguistics. It is not only in richness that the semantic relations exceed the phonemic. To take again the relation whose variants have been united under the commun label of ’’participation”; it will be easy to find this same relation expressed by a stem-morpheme, most commonly Of the type have. But then in the group ”A has X” two analysés will be necessary s on the one hand there is the relation of participation between A and the group has X (as in any other verbal group); on the other hand there is the same relation between A qnd X, the verb itself cumulating the semata of participation and other relations. These analyses (ArX and ArYX, in which have plays the roles of r and Y respectively) are con- tradictory. ' These contradictory analyses must not be confused with merely in- different analyses (for instance it is indifferent whether we regard an inflection as affecting a noun or a whole nominal group). Analyses are indifferent when the whole system can be described with equal eco- nomy and completeness one way or the other. But here neither analysis can be deduced from the other and both are necessary for a complete description of linguistic relations. The principle of non-contradictory analysis, which (though often some sacrifice of realism) may be maintained in phonemics, breaks down at the start on examination of the semantic system.