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Introduction Why do some English numerals, such as sixteen , seventeen , eighteen and nineteen , clearly display their internal composition ( six + teen ), while others — eleven and twelve — do not reveal such structure? At first glance, this may appear to be a trivial irregularity. Yet the contrast conceals a profound theoretical question: how can a single linguistic system contain signs that expose their internal logic while others conceal it? The answer depends on the perspective from which we observe language. From a historical or diachronic point of view, the focus falls on the origin and evolution of forms. From a synchronic perspective, by contrast, the interest lies in their present functioning, regardless of their past. In the first case, the linguist reconstructs genealogies; in the second, the speaker simply uses the signs as they exist in the current system. This distinction between studying the history of language and studying its present structure lies at th...

Retroactive Time. Dalí Revisited by AI. Introduction In the often-overlooked preface to the third edition of The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie), Friedrich Nietzsche reflects on the strange temporality of interpretation. This late addition, titled "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" ( Versuch einer Selbstkritik ), opens by referencing the "kernel of that odd and difficult book to which this later preface (or postscript) should be dedicated" [1]. The ambiguity embedded in the phrase "preface or postscript," (Vorrede oder Nachrede) signals a conceptual uncertainty about the temporal status of commentary: does the prologue precede or follow the work it attempts to frame? This rhetorical hesitation provides a fitting point of entry into Jacques Derrida's critique of temporality in Of Grammatology , where he interrogates the limits and paradoxes of framing texts. Both Nietzsche and Derrida challenge the assumption that meaning can be located at an...