Charles Sanders Peirce, a 19th-century American semiotician, proposed that the interpretant of a sign is the mental representation through which that sign evokes an object. In the context of semiotics, he established a triadic link between a first sign (or representatem), a second object, and a third interpretant. It is the representatem that initiates the interpretant, which in turn becomes a representatem. The latter, through a new interpretant, refers back to the initial object, thus initiating a potentially infinite process in theory. However, this process is actually circumscribed by the presence of a final interpretant: habit.