The relationship between linguistic forms and their meaning, utterance and its comprehension, has been from the onset at the centre of the history of linguistics and philosophy of language. Scientists have developed philosophical, practical, experimental, anthropological and psychological solutions to this problem. Recent developments in brain science aided by technology, statistical and digital modelling have resulted in enormous developments in brain and cognitive science that may aid in discovering the mechanism that attaches a set of verbal signals (in any medium) to a particular neural pathway.

However, advanced examination has yet to bridge this essential gap between a neural network and a cognition. A line of thought followed by most positivist theories we call here 'reductive aporia': linguistic units are reduced successively to what the theorist considers to be the basic unit of meaning. This unit then becomes the transformative element in the process of signification. We reveal that this approach is theoretically flawed to the extent that there is no reason that a more basic signifier is closer to the signified than a more complex one. This is contrasted with synthetic pragmatics, which we tentatively name as an assortment of signifiers that collectively associate with the signified. Our paper will employ sources ranging from the cognitive model of Bhartrhari (VII c. CE) and such modern thinkers as Antonio Damasio. We conclude that Bhartrhari's concept of 'sphota' is a theoretically rich principle to inform contemporary psycholinguistics. We thus seek to express this concept more precisely and to arrive at some possible ways such a theory could be supported in laboratory settings.