To see this, imagine a chain of signs with either a first or a last sign. The final sign that terminates the semiotic process will have no interpretant; if it did, that interpretant would function as a further sign and generate a further interpretant, and the final sign would, in fact, not terminate the process. However, since any sign must determine an interpretant to count as a sign, the final sign would not be a sign unless it had an interpretant. Similarly, a first sign could not be the inte