Cover not available
Part of
History of Linguistics 2011: Selected Papers from the 12th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS XII), Saint Petersburg, 28 August - 2 September 2011
Edited by Vadim Kasevich, Yuri A. Kleiner and Patrick Sériot
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 123] 2014
► pp. 137–144

Looking for a semantic theory

The path taken by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1931–1960)

ORCID logo | Laboratoire d’Histoire des Théories Linguistiques CNRS | Université Paris Diderot | Sorbonne Paris Cité

In the early 1930s, the Polish philosopher and logician Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) proposed a new formal approach to natural language which, unlike Chomsky’s, was based on a joint calculus of the grammaticality and meaning of sentences. This methodological choice, which resulted from Ajdukiewicz’s reflections on the nature of language, led him to consider different conceptions of meaning implementable in a syntactical algorithm. The aim of this paper is to retrace the various solutions provided by Ajdukiewicz to meet this challenge that will continue to be a real issue for future categorial grammars.

Published online: 29 August 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.123.12god
References
Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz
1931 “On the Meaning of Expressions”. Giedymin 1978, 1–34.Google Scholar
1931 1934a “Language and Meaning”. Giedymin 1978, 35–66.Google Scholar
1931 1934b “The World-Picture and the Conceptual Apparatus”. Giedymin 1978, 67–89.Google Scholar
1931 1935a “On the Problem of Universals” Giedymin 1978, 95–110.Google Scholar
1931 1935b “The Scientific World-Perspective”. Giedymin 1978, 111–117.Google Scholar
1931 1935c “Die syntaktische Konnexität”. Studia Philosophica I, 1–27. (English translation in Giedymin 1978, 118–139).Google Scholar
1931 1960 “Syntactical Connexions between Constituents of Declarative Sentences”. Giedymin 1978, 269–281.Google Scholar
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua
1953 “A quasi-arithmetical Notation for Syntactic Description”. Language 29/1, 47–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1957 “Husserl’s Conception of a Purely Logical Grammar”. Aspects of Language, ed. by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, 89–97. Amsterdam: The Magnes Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert
1994 Making it Explicit. Cambridge & London: Havard University Press.Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob
1892 “Sinn und Bedeutung”. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100, 25–50.Google Scholar
Giedymin, Jerzy
ed. 1978 The Scientific World-Perspective and other Essays 1931–1963. 
Dordrecht & Boston: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Godart-Wendling, Béatrice
1998 “Carnap et Ajdukiewicz: deux conceptions mathématisées de la syntaxe”. Le formalisme en question. Le tournant des années 30, ed. by Frédéric Nef & Denis Vernant, 303–316. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
ed. 2002  Les grammaires catégorielles . Langages 148.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund
1901 Logische Untersuchungen. Halle: Max Niemeyer. (2nd ed. 1913)Google Scholar
Lambek, Jim
1958 “The Mathematics of Sentence Structure”. The American Mathematical Monthly 65/3, 154–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1961 “On the Calculs of Syntactic Types”. Structure of Language and its Mathematical Aspects, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 166–178. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montague, Richard
1970 “English as a Formal Language”. Formal Philosophy. Selected Papers of Richard Montague, ed. by Richmond H. Thomason, 188–221. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Peter M
1995 “Meaning and Language”. The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. by Barry Smith & David Woodruff Smith, 106–137. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 “Categories, Construction and Congruence: Husserl’s Tactics of Meaning”. Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy, ed. by Richard Gaskin, 54–73. 
London: Routledge.Google Scholar