"The symbolic power of words is, then, as Deacon puts it, 'distributed in the relationships between words.' Deacon (1997, 83) writes 'Symbolic reference derives from combinatorial possibilities and impossibilities, and we therefore depend on combinations both to discover it (during learning) and to make use of it (during communications). Thus the imagined version of nonhuman animal language that is made up of isolated words, but lacking in regularities that govern possible combinations, is ultimately a contradiction in terms' "

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