0025 Okay, let me consider what is displaced when I utter the term, “piece in a jigsaw puzzle”.
0025 What is the reality that is not present when the spoken term is used.
Well, look. A referent is pictured in the red circle. The red circle indicates a referent.
How intuitively obvious is that?
0026 At the same time, I cannot ignore the dyadic actuality where two real elements, corresponding to the edge of one piece and the edge of another piece, are contiguous, [fits].
0027 Plus, should I neglect that there is a normal context that characterizes what is happening?
0028 To me, not only is the referent displaced by a spoken term, but the entire nested form that relates to the spoken term is not present, or is present only in potential1, in the normal context of definition3.
Can I see the meaning, presence and message in the possibility of ‘an obvious fit’1?
Is this why I am never going to get my “loan” back?
0029 But, what am I really asking?
Perhaps, the question that I raise is, “Is a word like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle?”
I ask, “Can I take Mithen’s ‘language puzzle’ literally?”
In the normal context of definition3, the actuality of a spoken word or term2 emerges from (and situates) the potential that spoken words sensibly fit together and that the fit is so good that it is easy to recognize1.
0030 But, what about the referent?
Yeah, what about the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is in the red circle?
Well, the referent has three commendable features. The first is the image (or the fragment of a big picture) that it bears. The second is that it can join other pieces in an assembly of adjacent pieces. The third is that the thing that the spoken word would picture or point to, if it could serve as an image or index, is displaced.
0031 It makes me wonder how speech-alone talk could bootstrap itself.
Well, Mithen has a hypothesis.
But, before I get that far, I want to suggest that manual-brachial gestures can be a source for words because they do not fully displace the referent. Instead, they call the referent to mind through the natural act of picturing and pointing.
In this regard, manual-brachial word-gestures allow a literal appreciation of the metaphorical statement that words are like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
0032 Here is a diagram of the corresponding category-based nested form.
The normal context of working in a team3 brings the actuality2 of patterns of iconic and indexal hand-talk2 into relation with the potential of ‘assembling and locking in a big picture’1.
Can I envision the meaning, presence and message1 that underlies each manual-brachial word-gesture2 in the normal context of team-work3?
Working in a team is what is happening3a. The possibility of ‘something happening’1a corresponds to ‘assembling the pieces, locking them in and visualizing the big picture’1a.