## Peirce’s 1870 “Logic Of Relatives” • Discussion 1

John Bottoms, writing in the Ontolog Forum, compared the graphic I drew for one of Peirce’s relational formulas to a pictographic image he had been studying.

Peirce introduced the compound term “giver of a horse to a lover of a woman” in Selection 7 to illustrate his use of marks of reference to identify the corresponding correlates of component terms.  The symbolic form of this compound term is shown below.

$\mathfrak{g}_{\dagger\ddagger} {}^\dagger\mathit{l}_\parallel {}^\parallel\mathrm{w} {}^\ddagger\mathrm{h}$

In my comment on Proto-Graphical Syntax I drew lines of identity to connect the corresponding marks of reference, as shown in the following Figure.

John tells us what he sees in this Figure in the following words:

One of my interests is in the intersection between images and prose.  The note [on Proto-Graphical Syntax] is prescient.  It echoes a semasiographic image that has been discussed recently on the web.  The image below shows two houses, and the tree shapes represent people.

In the image a girl complains to her ex-lover that his new relationship is not useful, and he is missing an opportunity to have children with her.  This image was created by a Yukaghir girl for a local game similar to Pictionary.

I started a draft in the middle of the night to draw out the analogies and disanalogies of these two Figures but the clear light of day showed me I would need to deal with a host of preliminary issues before moving on.  So I will turn to that task next.

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