Events which are staggered out according to time and reach consciousness in a series of acts and states also ordered according to time acquire, across this mulitiplicity, a unity of meaning in narration. Signs which signify by their place in a system and by their divergency from other signs (and the words of historically constituted languages do present this formal aspect) are able to confer an identity of meaning to the temporal dispersion of events and thoughts, to synchronize them in the undephasable simultaneity of a story.