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still informs us about something, it can be explained only in terms
of its direct physical quantities. But, in that case, it has
passed beyond the world of signs, that is, beyond the world of
language".
The fact that the meaning is essential if something is to
become a sign is, more often than not, ignored by structural
linguistics. Traditional linguists, on the other hand, postulate
that inflexional suffixes have no meaning because they are not
'respectable' signs and hence have no denotata. In more fortunate
cases, suffixes are treated as elements of 'relational' meaning.
Chomsky describes such morphemes as 'to' in 'I want to go' and the
dummy carrier of 'do' in 'did he come?' as virtually having no
meaning in any independent sense. These morphemes, though they
have no physical, palpable denotata, cannot be said to be
categorically meaningless. They are signs; visible, scriptable
and, if occasion demands, erasable. As signs, they should not
necessarily have denotata but they should have meaning.
Consequently, they are not categorically, or even partially
meaningless. Inflexional suffixes, though they have no physical
denotata, cannot be said to be meaningless because they connote
abstract or conceptual meanings. Suffixes like '-en' in 'oxen',
'beaten', 'deepen', etc., have no physical object or event
referents in the outside world, but they possess delimited semantic
functions. They express plurality, participiality, and verb-
derivationality, respectively.
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