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d between slots is very hard to distinguish. The meaning as counterpart of the image and the meaning as counterpart of coexisting terms merge. Before example, note that: Outside linguistics, value always seems to involve the same paradoxical truth. Tricky area. Very difficult in any domain to say what value consists of. So let us be very wary. There are two elements comprising value. Value is determined 1) by a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged, and that can be marked | [an up-arrow] and 2) by similar things that can be compared <- -> [left-right arrows]. These two elements are essential for value. For example, a 20-franc coin. Its value is a matter of a dissimilar thing that I can exchange (e.g. pounds of bread), 2) the comparison between the 20-franc coin and one-franc and two-franc coins, etc., or coins of similar value (guinea). The value is at the same time the counterpart of the one and the counterpart of the other. You can never find the meaning of a word by considering only the exchangeable item, but you have to compare the similar series of comparable words. You cannot take words in isolation. This is how the system to which the term belongs is one of the sources of value. It is the sum of comparable terms set against the idea exchanged. The value of a word can never be determined except by the contribution of coexisting terms which delimit it: or, to insist on the paradox already mentioned: what is in the word is only ever determined by the contribution of what exists around it. (What is in the word is the value.) Around it syntagmatically or around it associatively. You must approach the word from outside by starting from the system and coexisting terms. A few examples. The plural and whatever terms mark the plural. The value of a German or Latin plural is not the value of a Sanskrit plural. But the meaning, if you like, is the same. In Sanskrit, there is the dual. Anyone who assigns the same value to the Sanskrit plural as to the Latin plural is mistaken because I cannot use the Sanskrit plural in all the cases where I use the Latin plural. Why is that? The value depends on something outside. If you take on the other hand a simple lexical fact, any word such as, I suppose, mouton - mutton, it doesn't have the same value as sheep in English. For if you speak of the animal on the hoof and not on the table, you say sheep. It is the presence in the language of a second term that limits the value attributable to sheep. mutton / sheep / mouton (Restrictive example.) So the | arrow is not enough. The <- -> arrows must always be taken into account. Something similar in the example of decrepit. How does it come about that an old man who is decrepit and a wall that is decrepit have a similar sense? It is the influence of the neighbouring word. What happens to decrepit (an old man) comes from the coexistence of the neighbouring term decrepit (a wall). Example of contagion. [4 July 1911] It is not possible even to determine what the value of the word sun is in itself without considering all the neighbouring words which will restrict its sense. There are languages in which I can say: Sit in the sun. In others, not the same meaning for the word sun (= star). The sense of a term depends on presence or absence of a neighbouring term. The system leads to the term and the term to the value. Then you will see that the meaning is determined by what surrounds it. I shall also refer back to the preceding chap