Uddrag fra Propositions, [Nice1951] 046-0990

- 4 - In fact superordinat ion in syntax (as usually understood) normally answers to prominence in semantics. Many other structural terms lie ready to hand for the narrowing of the definition : transitive and intransitive in the lo- gistic sense, commutational and permutational in the glossematic senses, and so on. (For instance the relations expressed by the cases are normally per- mutable, not commutable). Such terms have however hardly yet been exploited for the structural definition of relations, in the field of linguistics. It is not only in richness that the semantic relations exceed the pho- nomic. To take again the relation whoso variants have been united under the oommun 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 analyses will be necessary : 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 and X, the verb itself cumulating the semata of participation and other re- lations. These analyses (ArX and ArYX, in which have plays the r81es of r and Y respectively) are contradictory. These contradictory analyses must not be confused with merely indifferent 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 economy 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 phonemies, breaks down at the start on exa- mination of the semantic system.