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Abstract
C. S. Peirce illustrates the distinction between types and their tokens by using words as an example. The length of a manuscript is measured by counting word tokens, but a person's vocabulary can be measured by counting word types. According to Peirce, a word type is not an existing object but a "significant form" of a token; thus he seems to make a distinction between the orthographic or phonological character of a word and its individual occurrences (inscriptions or utterances). However, there is more to words than their character and their individual occurrences. This paper examines different interpretations of the concept of type, distinguishes four different ways of individuating names and other words, and discusses the relevance of the ontology of words to questions about the sense and reference of names.
Keywords: Charles Peirce, Interpretant, Lexeme, Meaning, Name, Token, Type, Word.
I
Charles S. Peirce introduces the distinction between a token and a type into semiotics and philosophy by using as an example two ways of individuating words:
(P1) A common mode of estimating the amount of matter in a MS. or printed book is to count the number of words. There will ordinarily be about twenty the's on a page, and of course they count as twenty words. In another sense of the word "word," however, there is but one word "the" in the English language; and it is impossible that this word should lie visibly on a page or be heard in any voice, for the reason that it is not a Single thing or Single event. It does not exist; it only determines things that do exist. Such a definitely significant Form, I propose to term a Type. A Single event which happens once and whose identity is limited to that one happening or a Single object or thing which is in some single place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being significant only as occurring just when and where it does, such as this or that word on a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book, I will venture to call a Token. (CP 4.537, 1906)2
Words are signs, and in Peirce's classification of signs (CP 2.243-264, EP...