Some results for sentence meaning

Abstract

Most sms of the signs of NIVEAU are denoted by ‘that’—clauses. This feature they share with certain things which might very naturally be called the meanings of related English or French or German sentences. When asked for the meanings of the sentences ’you do not approach me’, ’tu ne t’avances pas auprès de moi’, or ’du näherst dich mir nicht’, a native English speaker might well reply: ”The sentences mean that the addressee does not approach the speaker.” When asked for the meanings of the sentences ’I intend to turn right’, ’j’ai l’intention de tourner à droite’, ’ich will nach rechts’, he might reply: ”The sentences mean that the speaker intends to turn right”. (Of course, I am not referring to a linguist who has done work on semantics in one of the three languages. He perhaps would come up with beautiful trees, as an able philosopher might come up either with a bunch of brackets or with baskets full of possible worlds or something else of this kind) Thus there seems to be a good case for saying that our sms occur elsewhere too, and occur there (viz. in natural languages) as sentence meanings. Can we say that we have attributed sentence meanings to the signs of NIVEAU?