The number three is essential to language. The phrase, line or sentence, depending and which of these units you are dealing with at any one time, and you can be dealing with all three in the poem which makes it so rich, all depend on context for meaning to be broached. This is something we all learned from deSaussure even if his theory of the sign turns out to be a lovely fiction but not much more. The phrase does not mean in an autonomous fashion because its referential field is contingent not necessary. We need to know what came before the phrase, the preconditions of its being uttered, presented, p