Fig. 1

Semiotic triangle. The semiotic triangle displays the relations between a textual representational artifact^72,73 in the form of a linguistic symbol, such as a specific term or statement, its corresponding cognitive representation in the form of a thought or idea that provides the intensional meaning for the symbol (based on Frege’s sense), and its corresponding referent system that provides the extensional meaning for the symbol (based on the term’s reference). The textual representational artifact does not directly relate to its corresponding referent system but is always mediated by a corresponding cognitive representation. The combination of the corresponding intensional and extensional meaning represents the semantic content (i.e., meaning in a general sense) of a textual representational artifact. With inferential and referential lexical competence, the two requirements for successfully communicating the semantic content of a term are specified. We adapted the diagram from⁷⁴, incorporated the distinction between textual representational artifact, cognitive representation, and (real) referent system from^72,73, and modified it to correspond with our use case. The original semiotic triangle follows Peirce’s⁷⁵ and Frege’s^39,40 independently developed triadic notion of a sign.