Jon,
I completely agree with the following principle:
JA> Another aspect of a sign's complete meaning concerns the reference a sign has to its interpretants...
And there are six kinds of reference that a sign my have to its interpretants. Each kind corresponds to one of the six basic question words in English (or their equivalents in other languages). Questions that begin with the first four question words may be answers with one word or phrase: Who, What, When, and Where. Any such question may be answered with one word or phrase and a MONADIC relation.
Questions that begin with How can be answered in a sentence with a dyadic verb, a DYADIC relation.
And questions that begin with Why require require a sentence with a verb that requires a subject, object, and an indirect object or a prepositional phrase: a TRIADIC relation.
In short, that is the distinction between Peirce's Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. The monadic relations of Firstness express answers to the words Who, What, When, or Where, The dyadic relations of Secondness express answers to the word How. And the triadic relations of Thirdness answer questions to the word Why.
In summary. all examples of Thirdness are answers to Why-questions. They all express some kind of intention or purpose or explanation or reason for the triadic connection.
John
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@att.net>
Sent: 2/13/24 9:02 AMc
Another aspect of a sign's complete meaning concerns the reference
a sign has to its interpretants, which interpretants are collectively
known as the “connotation” of the sign. In the pragmatic theory of
sign relations, connotative references fall within the projection
of the sign relation on the plane spanned by its sign domain and
its interpretant domain.
In the full theory of sign relations the connotative aspect of meaning
includes the links a sign has to affects, concepts, ideas, impressions,
intentions, and the whole realm of an interpretive agent's mental states
and allied activities, broadly encompassing intellectual associations,
emotional impressions, motivational impulses, and real conduct.
Taken at the full, in the natural setting of semiotic phenomena, this
complex system of references is unlikely ever to find itself mapped in
much detail, much less completely formalized, but the tangible warp of
its accumulated mass is commonly alluded to as the connotative import
of language.
Formally speaking, however, the connotative aspect of meaning presents
no additional difficulty. The dyadic relation making up the connotative
aspect of a sign relation L is notated as Con(L). Information about the
connotative aspect of meaning is obtained from L by taking its projection
on the sign‑interpretant plane. We may visualize this as the “shadow” L
casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the sign domain S and the
interpretant domain I. The connotative component of a sign relation L,
alternatively written in any of forms, proj_{SI} L, L_SI, proj₂₃ L, and
L₂₃, is defined as follows.
• Con(L) = proj_{SI} L = {(s, i) ∈ S × I : (o, s, i) ∈ L for some o ∈ O}.
Tables 4a and 4b show the connotative components of the sign relations
associated with the interpreters A and B, respectively. The rows of
each Table list the ordered pairs (s, i) in the corresponding projections,
Con(L_A), Con(L_B) ⊆ S × I.
Tables 4a and 4b. Connotative Components Con(L_A) and Con(L_B)
Resources —
Sign Relations
Connotation
Document History
Regards,
Jon