Jon, you asked, “How would you spell out the difference between a Rheme and a Seme? What would be an example of something that is a Seme, but not a Rheme?”
I think Bellucci gives a very lucid explanation of the two-stage process of generalization that went from term/proposition/argument to rheme/dicisign/argument and then to seme/pheme/delome. But while his explanation of the difference between dicisign and pheme is all that could be asked for, his explanation of the difference between Rheme and Seme is perhaps less thorough, so I might have a crack at that. I see two focal points in Peirce’s discussion of the Rheme. One is the definition in NDTR: “A Rheme is a Sign which, for its Interpretant, is a Sign of qualitative Possibility, that is, is understood as representing such and such a kind of possible Object.” The other arises in the context of Existential Graphs as representations of propositions: [[ If we take any proposition, say A sinner kills a saint and if we erase portions of it, so as to leave it a blank form of proposition, the blanks being such that if every one of them is filled with a proper name, a proposition will result, such as ______ kills a saint A sinner kills ______ ______ kills ______ where Cain and Abel might for example fill the blanks, then such a blank form, as well as the complete proposition, is called a rheme …. If it has one blank it is called a monad rheme, if two a dyad, if three a triad, if none a medad (from μηδέν). ] Lowell Lecture 2 ] [[ By a rheme, or predicate, will here be meant a blank form of proposition which might have resulted by striking out certain parts of a proposition, and leaving a blank in the place of each, the parts stricken out being such that if each blank were filled with a proper name, a proposition (however nonsensical) would thereby be recomposed. ] CP 4.560 (1906)] Is this the same “rheme” which is defined in NDTR as “a Sign of qualitative Possibility” which “is understood as representing such and such a kind of possible Object”? The latter sounds much more like a subject than a predicate, as far as the parts of a proposition are concerned. In the ordinary analysis of propositions, the rheme corresponds to the predicate, and the proper names that fill the blanks are subjects; the -adicity of the predicate is the number of subjects. In EGs, the “blanks” become “hooks” or “pegs”, and the filling of a blank becomes the attachment of a line of identity (denoting an existing individual) to a hook; that is why only proper names such as “Cain” or “Abel” can fill the blanks. Common nouns, on the other hand, appear to be parts of the rheme, i.e. of the predicate, rather than blank-fillers, because their reference is general. The predicate signifies the form of the relations among the subjects, and the linguistic expression of the predicate includes both nouns and verbs. (This is the case in English, but according to Peirce, this is a peculiarity of the group of languages to which English belongs: “I have been led to believe that in very few languages outside the Aryan group is the common noun a well-developed and independent part of speech” (EP2:309; see also CP 8.337, a 1904 letter to Welby). The representation of relations in verbal form is thus more universal among languages than the nominalization we find in “the Aryan group”.) But that is not the only way to analyze a proposition, as Peirce explained a 1908 letter to Welby: [[ When we have analyzed a proposition so as to throw into the subject everything that can be removed from the predicate, all that it remains for the predicate to represent is the form of connection between the different subjects as expressed in the propositional form. What I mean by “everything that can be removed from the predicate” is best explained by giving an example of something not so removable. But first take something removable. “Cain kills Abel.” Here the predicate appears as “_______ kills _______ .” But we can remove killing from the predicate and make the latter “_______ stands in the relation _______ to _______.” Suppose we attempt to remove more from the predicate and put the last into the form “_______ exercizes the function of relate of the relation _______ to _______” and then putting the function of relate to the relation into another subject leave as predicate “_______ exercizes _______ in respect to _______ to _______.” But this “exercizes” expresses “exercizes the function.” Nay more, it expresses “exercizes the function of relate,” so that we find that though we may put this into a separate subject, it continues in the predicate just the same. Stating this in another form, to say that ‘A is in the relation R to B’ is to say that A is in a certain relation to R. Let us separate this out thus: “A is in the relation R1 (where R1 is the relation of a relate to the relation of which it is the relate,) to R to B.” But A is here said to be in a certain relation to the relation R1. So that we can express the same fact by saying “A is in the relation R1 to the relation R1 to the relation R to B,” and so on ad infinitum. A predicate which can thus be analyzed into parts all homogeneous with the whole I call a continuous predicate. It is very important in logical analysis, because a continuous predicate obviously cannot be a compound except of continuous predicates, and thus when we have carried analysis so far as to leave only a continuous predicate, we have carried it to its ultimate elements. ] SS 71-2 ] Here not only the common nouns but the verbs (e.g. “kills”) get thrown into the subject. What happens then to the rheme? Is the continuous predicate still a rheme when all the ‘matter’ has been extracted from its ‘form’, so that nothing is left but an infinitely recursive “is in the relation to”? As far as I know, Peirce does not call that a “rheme” — in fact he no longer uses the term in his classification of signs after 1906. Perhaps that’s because a classification of signs tends to represent the various parameters by which they are classified as if they were discrete signs in themselves, each with its own object and interpretant, and this doesn’t align easily with the analysis which arrives at continuity as an “ultimate element.” The concept of Seme, on the other hand, “embraces the logical Term, the Subject or Object of a sentence, everything of any kind, be it a man or a scribed character, such as h or Pb, which will serve or is supposed to serve, for some purpose, as a substitute for its Object. It is a Sign which pretends, at least, to intend to be virtually its Object” (R 295 [Bellucci 315-16]). This would, I suppose, include “a Sign of qualitative Possibility” but also a whole lot more. Also, it is more Subject than Predicate — perhaps the result of “throwing into the subject everything that can be removed from the predicate,” as if Peirce was anticipating in 1906 the result of a method of analysis he would spell out only later. In fact, Peirce may have vaguely anticipated this already in R 800, which was apparently written before NDTR. The trichotomy which in NDTR is rheme/dicisign/argument appears in R 800 as substitute/dicisign/argument. [[ A substitute is a sign whose proper interpretant ignores all difference between the sign and its object (and a fortiori all difference between the sign and its interpretant). Thus, if I say, “King Edward is ill,” the name “King Edward” is intended directly to raise the idea of the man himself, and the less the interpreter thinks of the name as distinct from the thing the more completely is his attention directed to the intended meaning. ] R 800 (Bellucci 257) ] That sounds more like a Seme than a Rheme. Anyway, I hope this answers your question, Jon, about the difference between and Rheme and a Seme, though it may not be relevant to the other ground you covered in your post. On those other matters I don’t seem to have anything much worth posting. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 2-Jul-18 13:15 Gary F., List: I apologize in advance for the lengthy reply, but there is a lot of ground to cover. …
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