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In linguistic theory—in contrast to previous linguistic science and in conscious reaction against it—we strive for an unambiguous terminology. But in few places does the linguistic theoretician find himself in such terminological difficulties as here. We have tentatively called the both-and function a conjunction (with reference to the terminology of logic) or a coexistence, and the either-or function a disjunction (also with reference to logical terminology) or an alternation. But it will be certainly inexpedient to retain these designations. Linguists are accustomed to understanding by a conjunction something quite different, and we are forced in agreement with tradition to use conjunction in a corresponding fashion (for a so-called “part of speech,” even if we do not think it possible to define it as such). Disjunction has been used fairly widely in recent linguistic science as a specific kind of either-or function, and it would cause confusion and misunderstanding if we introduced the same term as a general designation of all either-or functions. Alternation, finally, is a deep-rooted and certainly ineradicable (moreover a convenient) linguistic name for a very specific kind of function (notably, the so-called ablaut and umlaut), which has strong associations with the either-or function and in reality is an especially complicated either-or function; it will therefore not do to introduce alternation as a general name for either-or functions. The term coexistence, it is true, has not been appropriated, but we do not recommend it because, among other reasons, a widespread linguistic usage connects it in a certain sense with coexistence between members of a paradigm.

— Prolegomena to a theory of language by Louis Hjelmslev

Richard, though he did not say so, appeared to accept this interpretation.

— Narrative of a Child Analysis by Melanie Klein

Naive realism would probably suppose that analysis consisted merely in dividing a given object into parts, i.e., into other objects, then those again into parts, i.e., into still other objects, and so on. But even naive realism would be faced with the choice between several possible ways of dividing. It soon becomes apparent that the important thing is not the division of an object into parts, but the conduct of the analysis so that it conforms to the mutual dependences between these parts, and permits us to give an adequate account of them. In this way alone the analysis becomes adequate and, from the point of view of a metaphysical theory of knowledge, can be said to reflect the “nature” of the object and its parts.

When we draw the full consequences from this, we reach a conclusion which is most important for an understanding of the principle of analysis: both the object under examination and its parts have existence only by virtue of these dependences; the whole of the object under examination can be defined only by their sum total; and each of its parts can be defined only by the dependences joining it to other coordinated parts, to the whole, and to its parts of the next degree, and by the sum of the dependences that these parts of the next degree contract with each other. After we have recognized this, the “objects” of naive realism are, from our point of view, nothing but intersections of bundles of such dependences. That is to say, objects can be described only with their help and can be defined and grasped scientifically only in this way. The dependences, which naive realism regards as secondary, presupposing the objects, become from this point of view primary, presupposed by their intersections.

The recognition of this fact, that a totality does not consist of things but of relationships, and that not substance but only its internal and external relationships have scientific existence, is not, of course, new in science, but may be new in linguistic science. The postulation of objects as something different from the terms of relationships is a superfluous axiom and consequently a metaphysical hypothesis from which linguistic science will have to be freed.

— Prolegomena to a theory of language by Louis Hjelmslev