Advanced Grammatology 02: Understanding Semantics

This course was taught at the applied virtuality theory lab, CAAD ETH Zurich, in Winter 2013 and Summer 2014 Since Claude Shannon‘s Mathematical Theory of Communication (1936), the notion of information in its technically treatable sense is often distinguished from its linguistic sense by ascribing to the former, as opposed to the latter, a purely quantitative treatment. Yet since the founding documents of a general linguistics in the late 19th century, it is clear for every linguist who affirms the break with the traditional way of studying language as philology, that the notion of the sign is to be treated purely quantitatively as well. Ferdinand de Saussure‘s structuralist paradigm for understanding processes of signification views the linguistic sign as a quantitative value, yet as a negative one which cannot, in itself, be positivized. As a negative value, it can only be specified by „profiling“ it through infinitary lists and their net of contrasts: a ,this‘ can never be signified directly, Saussure held, but only by labelling it as ,not-that‘ and not-that‘ and ,not-that‘ etc. In short, a linguistic sign can only be determined structurally and differentially, within a framework of place-value distributions. From a logical point of view, de Saussure‘s paradigm of negative determination obviously entails problems regarding methodological feasibility, since it holds, by principle, that the necessary infinitary lists can never exhaustively be made explicit. This is the decisive reason why de Saussure himself considered his own structural approach, which attempted to conceive of language as a system, as having ultimately failed. Surely the post-structuralist critiques on such a notion of general linguistics are well known; yet from the point of view of algebraic computability (rather than that of logics), the situation looks different and is hardly explored today. Louis Hjelmslev is one of the very few linguists who continued the „differentiability within negativity“ approach initiated by de Saussure, by extending it mathematically. He considered Saussure‘s ,negative values‘ in a generalized sense as ,algebraic invariants‘. Like this, the structuralist paradigm is open for taking probabilistic procedures like Markov Chains and other algorithms, with which the diverse programming languages ordinarily work today, into account. From the logical point of view, this can hardly count as a forward pointing path, since it does not clarify how a notion of system could be objectified. Yet with regard to the logistic networks, such fixation is (arguably) neither necessary nor desireable. Here, Hjelmslev‘s algebraic approach offers a powerful alternative to the pre-dominant approaches in terms of semantic or object-oriented (informational) database logic and ontologies, because it is capable of abstracting from the distinction between natural language vs artifical/formal language and needs not subject one to the other: communication and signification can be treated as mutually complementary aspects. In this kolloquium we will work through Hjelmslev‘s Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943), and appropriate it methods in practice. We want to explore if and how structural linguistics as glossematics (in the sense of Hjelmslev) can be extended towards an alphabet of things that were capable of integrating the operability of generative linguistics (Chomsky etc), and hence could provide a powerful method of pre-specific modeling.

"In its totalizing ambition, there are many reasons to think that the project of reductively characterizing semantic structure may be undesirable in itself. As Stanley Rosen notes, “every hermeneutical program is at the same time itself a political manifesto or the corollary of a political manifesto” (2003: 141). This applies a fortiori to the programme of linguistic semantics, the goal of which is not, as in (applied) hermeneutics, to interpret texts, but to give an account of the very constituents of meaning that any textual interpretation presupposes. Since semantic analyses of language – or, to give them an older name, attempts to identify the “language of thought” – are closely related to claims about the conceptual abilities of speakers and the cultural resources of communities, we semanticists surely should be – and often are – cautious in arguing for the theoretical uniqueness for our current models of meaning. Claiming that, from the point of view of the linguistic system, such and such an expression has such and such core or central semantic properties risks reductively diminishing our picture of the complexity of languages, and hence of the linguistic practices and conceptual and cultural richness of their speakers."

OpenAI. https://openai.com, 2023

In this conversation, Esmaeilpour Ghoochani and ChatGPT discussed the connection between euphemisms such as "Zounds" and "Godzooks," Katography, post-humanism, and the concept of the spirit as a bone. While there was some initial confusion about the relationship between these concepts, the conversation touched on the ways in which language and signification are intertwined with broader philosophical questions about the nature of human beings and their relationship to the world. The conversation also touched on the potential implications of AI for these questions, with some discussion of the ways in which AI might represent a step forward in terms of reducing or eliminating the limitations of human bodies. Overall, the conversation provided a thought-provoking exploration of some of the deeper questions underlying human language and communication.

Semantics and Pragmatics, 2020

Meaning-making is at the center of all human communicative events. Communication is an exchange of meanings encoded in written or spoken words, non-verbal cues, signs, symbols, and so on. Creating, exchanging, and interpreting meaning is ingrained in human nature since prehistoric times. Language is the most sophisticated medium of communication. It is through language that we set meanings or in other words — refer, define, and signify the things in nature and the ideas in our mind. (Griffiths, 2017) The term ‘meaning of meaning’ was first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1923. According to him meaning is related to multiple phenomena. It has various facets and these features are related to the external world (extra-linguistic factors) and the linguistic properties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics) The concept of meaning is vast and has many moving parts. Questing for the answer — ‘what is the meaning of meaning’ makes us take a multi-disciplinary approach; from linguistics, philosophy, neurology, to semiotics. In this essay, I will reflect on the meaning of ‘meaning’ from a multidisciplinary approach, discuss the challenges of doing meaning, and the role of context in understanding the meaning of words and sentences.

Studies in Language, 1981

Manuscrito, 2022

In this paper we suggest that Duffley's sign-based semantics rests on two main claims: a methodological one and an ontological one. The methodological one is the analysis of corpora and the ontological one is the postulate of mental content. By adopting a linguistic enactivist perspective with a Wittgensteinian twist, we endorse Duffley's methodological claim and suggest that

Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2003

This paper advocates the use of dialectical analysis (Temple: 2008-2009; 2011; 2012) in the study of language. This method grew out of two major insights: Vygotsky's 'Analysis into Units' (Vygotsky: 1934) and David Hume's Universal Principles of Human Understanding (Hume: 1748). I argue that the properties of the smallest functional units of a complex whole determine their behavior within the system and thus help us understand the behavior of the whole system. Since the smallest units of all human languages (word-meanings) universally possess psycho-physical, social and historical properties, we can extrapolate a number of linguistic universals that apply without exception in all forms of verbal thought (aka human languages). My generalizations about the universal nature, functions and behaviors of word-meanings in use are supported by examples of how the universal 'sinews' of generalization create and hold together meaning at different levels of complexity (word, phrase, sentence, discourse). Having extrapolated a number of linguistic universals from the shared properties of all word-meanings, I attempt to explain the mind-boggling diversity of linguistic forms, and discover that it is also caused by the same universal properties of word-meanings. Using mostly Latvian/Russian examples, I show how variations in physical word structure (morphology), arising from the idiosyncrasies of each 'social Mind' spinning its own 'webs of significance,' have a 'tsunami' effect throughout the syntax of every language. I conclude that, despite the diversity of forms in which associations by resemblance, contiguity and cause/effect are expressed in the grammars of different languages, the basic 'architectural principles' human minds use for building complex structures of meaning are the same in all times and places. Syntax, viewed as ingenious 'technologies' different societies have developed for expressing universal semantic relationships, becomes logically comprehensible. It just may be that a comparative study of the various renditions of generalization in the grammars of different languages may open up new horizons for linguistic analysis.