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signs sending back to signs, in an infinite regression. In such a theoretical landscape any interpretant of a given sign, being in its turn and under other circumstances a sign, becomes temporarily a metasemiotic construction acting (for that occasion only) as explicans of the interpreted explicatum and being in its turn intrepreted by another interpretant. "The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object as its limit. The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handled along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series" (1.339).
This infinite series could, however, make the semantic encyclopedia unattainable and the work of semantic analysis continuously baffled by its own need of completedness. But there is a logical limit, and the encyclopedia cannot be infinite; this limit is just the universe of discourse. The list of the twelve propositions in comprehension (2.520) quoted above presupposes a limited universe of marks. "An unlimited universe would comprise the whole realm of the logically possible. . . . Our discourse seldom relates to this universe: we are either thinking of the physical possible, or of the historical existent, or of the world of some romance, or of some other limited universe. . . . A universe of things is unlimited in which every combination of characters, short of the whole universe of characters, occurs in some object. . . . In like manner the universe of characters is unlimited in case every aggregate of things short of the whole universe of things possesses in common one of the characters of the universe of characters. . . . In our ordinary discourse, on the other hand, not only are both universes limited, but, further than that, we have nothing to do with individual objects or simple marks: so that we have simply the two distinct universes of thing and marks related to one another, in general, in a perfectly indeterminate manner" (2.519,520; also 6.401). 4
The notion of universe of discourse, along with the one of 'possible world' (2.236), links any semantic representation to contextual selections (see Eco, 1976, 2.11) and opens interesting perspectives on contemporary text grammars.
7.2.8.
There is, however, a question. The fact that lithium is vitreous, translucent, hard, brittle, and so on seems to be without any doubt a matter of predication in terms of general qualities (or marks or charac-

 
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