The subject-predicate division* is not the only kind of coupling which occurs in sentences.* Not only can symbols be coupled with symbols; symbols can also be coupled with things or classes of things. Peirce’s example: A father catches his child’s eye, points to an object, and says, “Balloon.”
1.2. A sentence utterance is a triadic event involving a coupler and the two elements of the uttered sentence.†
1.21. If a dyadic relation is abstracted from a triadic relation and studied as such, the study may have validity as a science, but the science will not be a science of triadic behavior.
For example, a neurologist may study the dyadic events which occur in the acoustic nerve of a person who hears the sentence The King of France is bald. The result of such a study may be a contribution to the science of neurology, but it will not be a contribution to the science of triadic behavior.
A logician may abstract from the speaker of a sentence, study the formal relation between the terms of the sentence and what is entailed by its assertion. His study may contribute to the science of logic, but it will not contribute to the science of triadic behavior.
A professor writes a sentence on the blackboard: The King of France is bald. The class reads the sentence.
If one wishes to study this sentence utterance as an item of behavior, it does not suffice to abstract from the professor and the class and to study the semantics and syntax of the sentence. If one considers the sentence utterance as an item of behavior, one quickly perceives that it is a pseudo sentence. The sentence may have been uttered but it does not assert anything. For one thing, the phrase the King of France does not refer to anything, since there does not presently exist a king of France. For another thing, a second condition of bona fide sentence utterance is lacking. As Peirce said, asserting a sentence is something like going before a notary and assuming responsibility for it. No one imagines that the professor has done this.
Many of the philosophical puzzles about sentences have arisen from the failure to distinguish between actual sentence utterances and professors uttering pseudo sentences in classrooms.
1.3. A name is a class of sounds coupled with a thing or class of things.
There is no necessary relationship between a name and that which is named beyond the coupling of name and thing by namer.
1.31. It is the peculiar property of a name, a class of sounds, not only that it can be coupled with a class of things but also that in the coupling the sound is transformed and “becomes” the thing.*
The word glass sounds brittle but it is not. The word brittle sounds brittle but it is not.
The word sparkle seems to sparkle for English-speakers but not for Germans. The word funkeln seems to sparkle for Germans but not for English-speakers.†
1.311. A symbol must be unlike what it symbolizes in order that it may be transformed and “become” what is symbolized.
The sound cup can become a symbol for cup. A cup cannot be a symbol for cup.
1.4. The coupling relation of a sentence is not like any other world relation. Yet — indeed for this very reason — it may symbolize any world relation whatever, subject only to the context of utterance and the rules of sentence formation.
1.41. A sentence may mean anything it is used to mean.
Thus, the sentence baby chair uttered by a two-year-old can be reliably understood by its mother as asserting within different contexts any number of different relationships. It can also be understood as a command or a question. Some possible meanings of the two-word telegraph sentence baby chair:
That is a baby chair (chair for the baby).
That is a little chair.
Baby is in his chair.
Baby wants his chair.
Where is baby chair?
Bring baby chair.
Bring chair for baby.*
1.42. The coupling relation of a sentence is not isomorphic with the world relation it symbolizes.
It is true that the sentence John loves Mary is a coupling of sentence elements (a child could say John Mary and be understood if John was loving Mary at the time) referring to a dyadic relationship between John and Mary.
But it is also true that although the sentence John gives a ring to Mary refers to a triadic relation obtaining between John, the ring, and Mary, the sentence is still a coupling of elements: (1) we are speaking about John; (2) we are saying something about him.
It is also true that although the sentence John plays bridge with Mary and Ted and Alice refers to a tetradic relation obtaining between John and Mary and Ted and Alice, the sentence is still a coupling of elements: (1) we are speaking about John; (2) we are saying something about him.*
1.5. When one studies dyadic behavior, i.e., the learned response of an organism to stimuli, it is proper to isolate certain parameters and variables. These include: amplitude of response, latency of response, frequency of stimulus, reinforcement, extinction, discrimination, and so on.
But if one considers triadic behavior, i.e., the coupling of a sentence by a coupler, a different set of parameters and variables must be considered.
There follow below some of these parameters and variables.
1.51. Every sentence is uttered in a community.
The community of discourse is a necessary and nontrivial parameter of triadic behavior.
This is not the case in dyadic behavior. For example, to speak of a “community” of organisms responding to each other by signals may be true enough, but it is also to use words trivially, analogically, and contingently. Thus, it may not be false to say that an exchange of growls between polar bears takes place in a community of polar bears. It is trivial to say so, however, because it is possible to think of bears responding to stimuli outside a community, e.g., to the sound of splitting ice, in the same way we think of bears responding to growls.
But it is impossible to think of an exchange of sentences occurring otherwise than between two or more persons.
1.511. In triadic behavior, the dimension of community can act as either parameter or variable.
It is a parameter, for example, in an ongoing encounter between therapist and patient: the community does not change.
It is a variable when the community varies. The meaning of a sentence can very well be a dependent variable, depending on the independent variable, the changing community.
For example, the patient utters the following sentence to the therapist: My wife bugs me. This sentence may be uttered as a constative sentence asserting a state of affairs between patient and wife.
On the following day, however, at a group session at which both patient and wife are present, the same sentence is both uttered by patient and received by all present with another or at least an added meaning. The new meaning, moreover, is a function of the new community. Thus, it not only asserts a relation between patient and wife; it is also delivered and received as an attack, a bugging of wife and a wife being bugged.
1.52. A signal is received by an organism in an environment. A sentence is received and uttered in a world.
When Helen Keller learned that water was water, she then wished to know what other things “were”—until the world she knew was named.
1.521. An environment has gaps for an organism, but the world is global, that is, it is totally accounted for, one way or another, rightly or wrongly, by names and sentences.
A chicken will respond to the sight of a hawk but not to the sight of a tree. But a child wishes to know what a tree “is.”