A sign depends on an object in a way that enables (and, in a sense, determines) an interpretation, an "interpretant", to depend on the object "as the sign depends on the object". The interpretant, then, is a further sign of the object, and thus enables and determines still further interpretations, further interpretant signs. The process, called "semiosis", is irreducibly triadic, Peirce held, and is logically structured to perpetuate itself. It is what defines sign, object, and interpretant in general. As Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990: 7) put it, "the process of referring effected by the sign is "infinite"." (Peirce used the word "determine" in the sense not of strict determinism, but of effectiveness that can vary like an influence.)