The claim
This is CLAIM-082 as first filed. CLAIM-072 granted, on reading Saussure, that “purely differential” is said of signifier and signified taken apart, that the sign as a whole is a positive fact, and that Saussure does not set value against reference. ARG-034 holds the inference from that reading to this title Rejected. CLAIM-082 now states only what the reading carries: value, as distinct from signification, is fixed by contrast.
Two parts are left here. The first is that significance in use, not only value in the language system, is fixed by contrast. CLAIM-242 and ARG-033 take that up. The second is that contrast works instead of reference. CLAIM-082’s body already qualified it from LIT-809 and LIT-860: contrast together with reference, not contrast instead of it.
Why it was Proposed
Its source in the manuscript is Lévi-Strauss (LIT-775), which the record has not read. The reading it once leaned on, Saussure’s, does not carry it.
Note of 2026-10-29: rejected on its own condition
Its defeat condition is met by a reading the record holds. In Bergen, Goodman and Levy’s Experiment 1 (THEORY-172, Active; NOTE-613), a novel symbol is read as the unnamed object only through its contrast with an alternative tied to the other object by resemblance: “the contrast works only because one alternative is iconically tied to an object.” Contrast did its work through the correspondence the title says it replaces. What survives is CLAIM-082’s narrowed claim about value, and CLAIM-242’s use-level counterpart, which sets contrast beside reference rather than against it.