Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric (Mar 2015)
On Language Adequacy
Abstract
The paper concentrates on the problem of adequate reflection of fragments of reality via expressions of language and inter-subjective knowledge about these fragments, called here, in brief, language adequacy. This problem is formulated in several aspects, the most general one being: the compatibility of the language syntax with its bi-level semantics: intensional and extensional. In this paper, various aspects of language adequacy find their logical explication on the ground of the formal-logical theory of syntax T of any categorial language L generated by the so-called classical categorial grammar, and also on the ground of its extension to the bi-level, intensional and ex- tensional semantic-pragmatic theory ST for L. In T, according to the token- type distinction of Ch. S. Peirce, L is characterized first as a language of wellformed expression-tokens (wfe-tokens) - material, concrete objects - and then as a language of wfe-types - abstract objects, classes of wfe-tokens. In ST the semantic-pragmatic notions of meaning and interpretation for wfe-types of L of intensional semantics and the notion of denotation of extensional seman- tics for wfe-types and constituents of knowledge are formalized. These notions allow formulating a postulate (an axiom of categorial adequacy) from which follow all the most important conditions of the language adequacy, including the above, and a structural one connected with three principles of compositionality.
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