Range as Operability: Creativity as Structure-Preserving Rebuild via Gap Thresholds and Intermediate Domains

This paper models creativity and academic “novelty” not as ex nihilo production, but as a structure-preserving rebuild of an existing concept network. Treating vocabulary as labels and meaning as local relational structure, it argues that coherence can survive radical register shifts if designated structural invariants are preserved. A cognitive model of novelty judgment is proposed, in which evaluators switch between difference-detection and common-structure detection along a continuous similarity variable. The transition point is formalized as a gap threshold: below it, outputs are judged derivative; above it, they are reframed as structurally novel, provided that skeleton visibility is maintained. On this basis, the paper redefines range (scope) not as a post-hoc evaluative label, but as an operability region opened by gap-induced intermediate domains that enable cross-contextual transfer. The framework clarifies why imitation/novelty boundaries are gradient and observer-dependent, and why reproducibility in the humanities can be structural rather than numerical. A register-shift stress-test protocol is specified to operationalize invariants and to distinguish permissible rhetorical amplification from prohibited semantic augmentation.