Stylistic form, style, value-style, medium, tone, vernacular, national language, regional language, and physiognomy are solidary categories, so that any functive of denotative language must be defined in respect of them all at the same time. By combination of a member of one category with a member of another category arise hybrids, which often have, or can easily be provided with, special designations [...] The individual members of each of these classes and the units resulting from their combination we shall call ‘connotators’.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.116

We call an entity that has given property an ‘indicator’, and we must distinguish between two kinds of indicators: ‘signals’ [...] and ‘connotators’. The difference between them from an operative point of view is that a signal may always be referred unambiguously to one definite plane of the semiotic, while this is never so of a connotator. A ‘connotator’, then, is an indicator which is found, under certain conditions, in both planes of the semiotic.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.118