Penrose (2004: xviii):
It is better to think of 3/8 as being an entity with some kind of (Platonic) existence of its own…
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To be clear, the claim here is that the fraction 3/8 is an abstract object that does not exist in space or time and is neither physical nor mental.
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, on the other hand, the fraction 3/8 is meaning realised by the realisation of wording in sounding or writing. In the first instance, it may be a participant or projection of a mental process mediated by a senser, or of a verbal process mediated by a sayer, and it exists semiotically at the time and place of the unfolding of the mental or verbal process. As a projection, it is prototypically a participant in an elaborated identifying process (the solving of a mathematical equation).
As meaning potential, its "existence" depends on its being instantiated by language users.
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