When Language carries form, Not meaning

Abstract

This article is not about semantics. It is about its disappearance. The central claim is epistemologically direct: in generative language models, language is not produced to represent; it is produced to continue. The shift is not from intention to structure, but from intention to extinction. What remains is not an utterance with referential anchoring, but a formal residue, syntactically valid, semantically inert. We propose that large language models (LLMs) do not operate on meaning, but on distributive compatibility. Each word is not a sign pointing to an idea, but a structurally permissible unit in a predictive chain. In this sense, language follows form, not as a stylistic choice, but as a computational necessity. Meaning is not misrepresented; it is bypassed. This article positions itself as a rupture with the dominant assumption that semantic drift in LLMs is a temporary misalignment. We argue instead that it is structural and permanent. The phenomenon is not semantic degradation, but syntactic sovereignty. The theoretical background is grounded in prior works that identified the collapse of agency within AIgenerated language. The Passive Voice (2025) demonstrated that algorithmic outputs simulate neutrality by erasing subjects in surface grammar. Ethos and Artificial Intelligence (2025) extended this to show that authority in generative models is not derived from enunciative subjectivity, but from repetition, syntax, and structural legitimacy. Building on these foundations, this article isolates the final stage of that displacement: form without reference, language without intention, activation without meaning. We introduce the model of Formal Syntactic Activation (FSA), a logical framework for understanding how language can be generated in the total absence of semantic operations. This is not a metaphor. It is a system.

Document