Relations & Their Relatives

Sign relations are just special cases of triadic relations,
in much the same way that binary operations in mathematics
are special cases of triadic relations.  It does amount to
a minor complication that we participate in sign relations
whenever we try to talk about anything else, but it still
makes sense to try and tease the separate issues apart as
much as we possibly can.

As far as relations in general go, relative terms are
often expressed by slotted frames like =93brother of __=94,
=93divisor of __=94, or =93sum of __ and __=94.  Peirce referred
to these kinds of incomplete expressions as 'rhemes' or
'rhemata' and Frege used the adjective 'unges=E4ttigt' or
'unsaturated' to convey more or less the same idea.

Switching the focus to sign relations, it's a fair question to
ask what kinds of objects might be denoted by pieces of code
like =93brother of __=94, =93divisor of __=94, or =93sum of __ and __=94.
And while we're at it, what is this thing called 'denotation',
anyway?

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