|
Meaning is fugitive in nature though we are continuously creating meaning out of the utterly nonsensical reality. We engage ourselves with each other in discussing either the recent earthquake in Kashmir, an economically hard time, a popular movie, or so many other things, which range from the micro-world to the macro-world of the giant heavenly bodies. The delicacies of human emotion, the subtleties of the material world – whatever may be the topic – rest on the belief that language conveys meaning, though any effort to systematize the theory of meaning will always be considered a mission impossible, since language is vague, ambiguous and, most interestingly, it is not about the precision but about the imprecision – it is not about the exactness but about the approximation – it is not about the certainty but about the uncertainty! This kind of unsystematicity and irregularity is not at all a product of the ‘historical accident’ (as it was generally believed by the logical positivists, in contrast with the ordinary language philosophers), but the very essence of life – the essential ingredient of human existence or an absolute necessity to reign over the universe, a pre-condition for the survival and creativity, not in the mechanical sense of ‘generation’. It allows us to assimilate new information by opening the immense panorama of possibilities. Phenomenological proclamation Language is the ultimate form of self-deception, camouflaging all the information about itself. This point has been correctly emphasized by Wittgenstein, in TLP, 4.002, where he states that language disguises thought, so much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purpose. It plays a crucial role in putting questions about all kinds of possibilities and impossibilities, excepting its own existence! Language has the capacity to mean something not because it represents a static repository of meaning and every one has the key to access that secret vault. Designated rapporteur Language can convey meaning because it is a potential designator. While talking it designates something which is common to all speakers. And what is common among the speakers is a domain of discourse which is relative to a particular model of the world around us. The model of the world varies synchronically across the different cultural communities. It also varies diachronically depending on the facts of socio-cultural evolution. Since the modeling of the domain of discourse, as a reflection of the phenomenological world, is always a matter of subjective prejudices, because of being molded by socio-cultural beliefs, this domain is fugitive in nature. Most of the above mentioned properties, such as vagueness, ambiguity, imprecision, approximation, etc., are the attributes of this domain of discourse. Under these circumstances, looking for a semantic theory which is preconditioned by an existence of a repertoire of expression-meaning relation, at least in case of the basic expressions, no matter with whatever degree of generative power, will always remain beyond the scope of human endeavor. If so, then what would be the goal of a semantic theory? Functional Mind and the Boundaries of the World For the shake of precision, the intension of formalism is to capture the dynamics of the human mind, in terms of tautology and contradiction, since both of them are useful to draw the boundary of our contingent world view. Nevertheless the semantic constituent of the surrounding socio-physical realities is a matter of drawing inferences, depending on corporeal information. Since corporeal information is itself an interpretation of the world, the linguistic translation of this interpretation becomes a second order translation and/or abstraction of the world around us (Karmakar 2017). Hence, it is vulnerable to fault, since the probability of fault varies proportionately with the increasing distance towards super-ordination (Nelson 1985). Paying a little attention to the concept of characteristic function will reveal the fact that acting upon the domain of discourse, it produces the partitions, in terms of class membership, that result in a system of categories, which is important to characterize the cognitive capacity of the species, since to cognize means to categorize (Harnard 2017). In this process of categorization, it explores the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations (Nelson 1985), that generally hold among the entities of the domain of discourse. As a result a well structured ontological space has been evolved. It is true that nothing is sacrosanct about all these boundaries, since the domain of discourse varies, with the synchronic and diachronic variations. Irrespective of all these things, there is no way to deny the fact that characteristic function plays a crucial role in partitioning the domain. In formal semantics, the different shades of inter-domain or intra-domain variations can be judged on the basis of the truth scale, on one extreme of which lies contradiction and on the other tautology. In between these two marginal conditions, there exists the world of contingencies. Recapitulating function A metaphysical interlude So far, so good. Let’s go back to our discussion of function. Functions are functions not because they impose order among the entities (obviously, in terms of tautological entailment), but rather they comprise that essential intermission between man and nature which helps us to transcend to the world of subjectivity. Then, the concept of f-mind (Jackendoff 2017) is also a transcendental one. Furthermore, it does not exist in the territory of an individual, either under the Cartesian hegemony of mind-body dualism or as an embodiment because of being a projection of the hidden chemistry of human physiology. Rather, it is socio-physical because social reality embeds physical entities and physical reality embeds social relations (Nelson 1985). As a part of physical reality, f-mind constitutes the necessary conditions for human existence, whereas as a construct of social reality it reflects the contingencies we rely upon. Beginning of the Apocalypse If so, then in no sense can the logician’s effort be considered a theory of meaning. Rather it is an effort to unveil the disguise of the language – to disclose the underlying structure of human cognition. In our conclusive note, we would like to say that by language we mean the hidden mechanism of designating meaning, by the use of which, one can talk about something; whereas meaning is like those ‘misty halos’, the treacherous, but intrinsic essence of human existence, in California Linguistic Notes Volume XXXII No. 2 Spring, 2017 9 the sense that it is the f-image / projection of the socio-physical world we live in. But where do we put the ‘function’, within this entire schema? - The author has some understanding, obviously open to doubt: function is that illuminator, being lit, which cause meaning to come into existence. Conclucion Finally, a brief understanding of our discussion, ultimately, reveals the following points. Language is all about imprecision, imperfection and approximation, which are the essence of our existence. Unlike any deterministic school of thought, we don’t have any such faith that word has meaning, since language is polymorphous in nature. Understanding of meaning needs a manipulation of extra-linguistic information, which may vary either synchronically or diachronically, or both. But irrespective of these issues there is still something which is deterministic in nature, and may be an embodied perspective of the language. We have labeled it as functional mind, which works on the hidden mechanism of functions. Moreover, in the case of forming categories, it plays a crucial role by partitioning the ontological space, facilitating the goal of cognition.()，英语毕业论文，英语论文题目 |
