The three principal elements are
‘‘symbol,’’ ‘‘thought or reference,’’ and ‘‘referent.’’
The symbol is a particular phonological or graphical form such as
e l e p h a n t.
The thought or reference is the meaning-content of the form,
namely the idea of an elephant.
The referent is the nonlinguistic thing in the world being talked about
(actual elephants).
Stephen Ullmann prefers to relabel the vertices of the triangle
as ‘‘name,’’‘‘sense,’’ and ‘‘thing,’’ respectively.