Chapter 5 Meaning and Interpretation. Part I

Abstract

The paper is an attempt at a logical explication of some crucial notions of current general semantics and pragmatics. A general, axiomatic, formal-logical theory of meaning and interpretation is outlined in this paper. In the theory, according to the token-type distinction of Peirce, language is formalised on two levels: first as a language of token-objects (understood as material, empirical, enduring through time-and space objects) and then—as a language of type-objects (understood as abstract objects, as classes of tokens). The basic concepts of the theory, i.e. the notions: meaning, denotation and interpretation ofwell-formed expressions (wfes) of the language are formalised on the type-level, by utilising some semantic-pragmatic primitive notions introduced on the token-level. The paper is divided into two parts. In Part I a theory of meaning and denotation is proposed, and in Part II - its expansion to the theory of meaning and interpretation is presented. The meaning, respectively the interpretation, of a wfe, is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing same manner of use of types, respectively, the relation possessing same manner of interpreting of types (cf. Ajdukiewicz [2], Wittgenstein [49]). The concept of denotation is defined by means of the relation of referring which holds between wfe-types and objects of reality described by the given language.