The core of grammar
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Mieszko Tałasiewicz,
Abstract
Categorial grammar, developed by Ajdukiewicz, was the first formal account of the general syntax of language. It was based on profound insights of Frege and Husserl as to the nature of sense and reference of linguistic expressions. Dichotomies of operator versus argument, basic category versus functor category, and names versus sentences alongside with parallelisms such as syntax-semantics are counted as essential. Further development of categorial grammar was influenced by comparisons with generative grammar and by adopting Chomsky's criterion of empirical adequacy as the main tool for assessing theories of grammar. That lead to a substantial formal enrichment and “flexibilization” of categorial grammar on the one hand, but on the other hand it resulted in abandoning original central ideas. Eventually, categorial grammar ceased to be a uniform theory and became leveled with countless hybrid theories stemming from considerations about particular linguistic phenomena, which seriously undermined the task of understanding syntax. In this paper, I propose to return to original rudiments in search for a cure for the said dispersion of explanatory power. The theory of syntax should be divided into a one simple, categorial core of grammar, in Ajdukiewicz' style, and multiple interfaces joining the core with idiosyncrasies of particular languages, to be developed by linguists.
© 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Prelims
- Semiotics and logic: Pragmatization of the common ground
- Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science
- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
Articles in the same Issue
- Prelims
- Semiotics and logic: Pragmatization of the common ground
- Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science
- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
