For Roman Jakobson, in "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics" (1960), "the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination." The "axis of selection" involves choosing one word instead of another; the "axis of combination" putting words together in a sequence. Reading individual words in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939) often involves the former, and sets of alternative senses: "sweet tarts" (116.23) can be cakes, "loose" women, or "sweethearts". But immediately thereafter, such layering is instead "projected into the axis of combination" as two phrases in a row: "Maggy's tea, or your majesty, if heard as a boost from a born gentleman" (116.24-25). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 August 2025)