Words and Their Offices
+17. The Individual Elements+ of which every sentence is composed are words. Every word is the sign of some idea. Each of the words horse, he, blue, speaks, merrily, at, and because, has a certain naming value, more or less definite, for the mind of the reader. Of these, horse, blue, he, merrily, have a fairly vivid descriptive power. In the case of at and because, the main office is, evidently, to express a relation between other ideas: [“I am at my post”], [“I go because I must”]. The word speaks is less clearly a relational word; at first thought it would seem to have only the office of picturing an activity. That it also fills the office of a connective will be evident if we compare the following sentences: He speaks in public. He is a public speaker. It is evident that speaks contains in itself the naming value represented in the word speaker, but also has the connecting office fulfilled in the second sentence by is.
All words have, therefore, a naming office, and some have in addition a connecting or relational office.