On some asymmetries of the linguistic system

Abstract

The parallelism between the planes of expression and content is complete in the sense that no definition applicable to the one plane would be meaningless for the other, providing it were made in terms of the system and not in terms of phonic or semantic filling. But it is equally clear that in the system of every actual language some definitions satisfied on one plane will correspond to a zero class upon the other. It is therefore fair to ask whether the introduction of a uniform terminology will not carry more disadvantages in the way of superfluous jargon than advantages in the way of clarification.