 |
"[...] it was claimed [in
the paper "Language and meaning" (1934)] that the specification
of the vocabulary and syntax is not sufficient to determine a language unequivocally,
but that there is needed in addition the meaning-specification (coordination)
of the language, i.e. the way in which meaning is coordinated in this language
with its words and expressions. Then it was established that one can discover
whether a person attaches to a certain sentence of a language the meaning
coordinated with it in this language by putting the person into a situation
(chosen with the sentence in mind) and noting whether he si prepared to
accept the sentence il this situation [...]. Only that person uses the sentences
of a language in the maening coordinated with them by the meaning-specification
of S who is invariably prepared to accept a sentence of type T
when h is in situation L.
We referred to such rules as rules of meaning (or meaning-rules)
of the language. We distinguished three kinds of meaning-rules, to wit:
(1) axiomatic rules of meaning (which specify the sentences whose
rejection - irrespective of the situation of the rejector - indicates a
violation of the meaning-specification of the language); (2) deductive
rules of meaning (which specify of sentences of such a sort that a person,
ig he accepts the first, must be prepared to accept the second on pain of
violating the meaning-specification of the language); (3) empirical rules
of meaning (which coordinate with certain experimental data certain sentences
that - in view of the experiential data - one must be prepared to accept
if he would avoid violating the meaning-specification of the languae)"
("The World-Picture and the Conceptual Apparatus" (1934),
in K. Ajdukiewicz, The Scientific World-Perspective and other Essays
(1931-1963), ed. by J. Giedymin, Reidel, Dordrecht 1978, p. 68).
"We
call two expressions 'immediately (directly) meaning related'
if either (a) both occur simultaneously in one and the same sentence dictated
by an axiomatic meaning rule; or (b) both occur simultaneously in one and
the same sentence-apis specified by a deductive meaning-rule; or (c) both
occur simultaneously in one and the same sentence coordinated with an experiential
datum by an ampirical meaning-rule. A language is called connected in case
its vocabulary of expressions is not decomposable into two non-empty classes
suc that no expressions of one classe is immediately meaning-related to
any expressions if the other classe"
(Ib.).
Back to Ajdukiewicz's
main page