Text Complexity: the Signans as a Signatum

Language complexity is investigated starting form the consideration that single phonemes may convey large chunks of meaning and, in so doing, they share the nature of the sign. Dipping on the semiotic apparatus of ch.S. Peirce, the paper shows by means of actual data that there exist some types of complexity of the content/signatum which can be understood only through the analysis of the expression/signans.