From the Tree to the Labyrinth (98 page)

Let us go back then, or let us look forward, beyond Abelard and beyond Bréal, and observe that, in the course of the debates on meaning, five areas of investigation have been identified, sometimes proceeding independently of each other, sometimes contradicting each other, and sometimes one of them presupposing—however acritically—the other:

1.
Semantics as the study of the meaning of terms removed from any context
(for instance, Carnap’s theory of meaning postulates, much of componential semantics, and the various forms of semic analysis, not to mention lexicography of every kind and tendency).

2.
Semantics as the study of content systems or structural semantics
(Hjelmslev and structural approaches to semantic fields in general
et similia
).

3.
Semantics as the study of the relation between term (or sentence) and referent, or as the study of reference
(for instance, Morris, Ogden, and Richards, much of analytic philosophy, and
in primis
Kripke). Let me remind the reader, however, of the distinction I posited in
Kant and the Platypus
between (i) providing instructions to identify the possible referent of a term and (ii) the act of reference itself.

4.
Semantics as the study of the truth conditions of propositions expressed by sentences.

5.
Semantics as the study of the particular meaning that terms or sentences assume in context or in the text as a whole
(this is a vast and variegated field that is concerned with the meaning of the same sentences in different contexts and circumstances, for which we may cite in first and foremost the later Wittgenstein, as well as the theory of different discursive isotopies, etc.).

Any student of semiotics is familiar with all these meanings of semantics, and yet it would be optimistic to claim that this awareness is shared by all students of language—not to mention the fact that the semioticians themselves, though well aware of the definition of semantics cited in 3 and 4 above, are often prone to reject it as nonpertinent, or to consider it as a single problem, whereas in fact it involves two quite different problems.

Let us consider a few examples of how the different conceptions of semantics may fail to recognize one another. In the
Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences du langage
of Greimas and Courtés, “truth” is defined.
²
The concept of truth might be foreign to a semanticist in senses 1 and 2, but it is certainly central for anyone concerned with senses 3 and 4 and, as Greimas demonstrates, it cannot be sidestepped by someone concerned with sense 5:

Truth designates the complex term which subsumes the terms
being
and
seeming
situated on the axis of contraries within the semiotic square of veridictory modalities. It might be helpful to point out that the true is situated within the discourse, because it is the fruit of veridiction operations; this thus excludes any relation (or any homologation) with an external referent.

I suspect that an analytic philosopher would find this definition confused and troublesome. But it would also be troublesome for someone concerned with semantics in sense 3, while it would have to be viewed with some indulgence by someone concerned with sense 4. In fact a truth-conditional approach is not concerned with establishing whether a given proposition is true but rather with what inferences one might legitimately draw
if the proposition were true.
What is certain is that, for someone who subscribes to sense 4, these truth conditions are posited within a “corporate body,” or coherent set of assumptions. When, however, doubt is cast upon the existence of this
holistic
system, as it is in Davidson, we may say that the principle of charity leads us to assume that a proposition makes sense and is therefore true within a discursive exchange (even if the sentence that conveys it does not present itself as especially perspicuous). Are we then to say that Greimas’s definition is so foreign to the analytical
koine?
I am not so sure. Granted, if someone says to me on the freeway “Look out, there’s a train ahead,” and I am aware that what is in front of me is a trailer truck, given that I have certain convictions concerning the real world, and appealing to the principle of charity, I assume that the speaker meant to say that there was a big rig ahead, and I let the communicative interaction go forward without a hitch. But do I only exercise the principle of charity in cases where I am able to counter an ambiguous sentence with certain convictions based on experience (that is, on what I consider to be true in the outside world), or do I not also behave in the same way when I attribute to someone else convictions that coincide with those I hold on the basis of a shared system of assumptions?

Let us suppose that a student of astronomy were to say to me: “Assuming that, after Galileo, the sun revolves around the earth and not vice versa,” I understand perfectly well, based on a shared system of assumptions, that he is asserting something false, but, applying the principle of charity, I assume that what he meant to say was what I consider to be true, in other words, the exact opposite of what he actually said (and that what he said was a common or garden
lapsus
), and I go on listening to his argument. In such a case I would be considering as true not what is confirmed by my experience of the outside world but what is guaranteed to be true by the holistic system of our received assumptions. We have only to stretch a little the notion of “situated within the discourse” for the conversation between a Greimasian and a Davidsonian, provided each of them exercises a reasonable principle of charity, to lose its dramatic edge.

But let us proceed with our examples. In the Einaudi
Enciclopedia,
under the entry “Semantica,” Diego Marconi—after defining semantics as the study of meaning—assumes that standard semantics is concerned only with natural languages. He devotes the bulk of his article to model semantics (sense 4), the semantics of possible worlds (senses 3 and 4), the dictionary vs. encyclopedia discussion (sense 1), but only in his introduction does he mention the existence of another tendency known as componential analysis (which is certainly concerned with meaning 1 and, for the purpose of establishing theoretically the number of components, presupposes sense 2).

The fact is that Marconi, at the time of writing, was an orthodox analyst and shared the conviction, common to many of his persuasion, that these problems were part and parcel of lexicography (senses 1 and 2); and for the analysts lexicography had nothing to do with semantics.

In the
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics
edited by T. A. Sebeok (1986), the entry “Semantics,” written by Bierwisch, at first tries to elude the often mortal embrace between semantics and the study of natural languages. After defining semantics as the study of meaning, Bierwisch excogitates the formula “A interprets B as representing C,” in which B is an object or an event, which permits it to be understood as something different from a phonation or a verbal enunciate. The author lists all the problems and takes into account the various positions, but in the body of the article he gives his own personal solution to these problems. Thanks to a happy decision by the editorial board, an entry on “Seme” (by Schogt) follows, in which we find a broad investigation into other linguistic positions, for the most part structural in their orientation (Lyons, Lamb, Pottier, Apresjan, Coseriu, Buyssens, Prieto, Greimas, etc.). Unfortunately, there is no mention of truth-conditional semantics—for some scholars the only semantics worthy of the name.

On the other hand, the Greimas-Courtés
Dictionnaire,
through a number of different entries, provides a review of the various lexicographical theories in the semantic and notional fields. They examine the componential theory, taken to the Hjelmslevian extreme of its own ambitions (how from “a score of binary semic categories, considered as the taxonomical basis of possible combinations” one can succeed “in producing several million sememic combinations”). They assume as prerequisites of any semantics that it be at once
generative
(recognizing too the work of the post-Chomskyan generativists),
syntagmatic
(attempting to overcome the limits of linguistic taxonomism and come to grips with a semantics of the sentence and finally of the text, sense 5), and
general;
semantics is not limited to the investigation of linguistic meanings but must address the semantics of the natural world insofar as it is made manifest by the various semiotics. I would say that senses 1, 2, and 5 are covered, and at this point we cannot expect Greimas to give his attention to model semantics or to the semantics of possible worlds (given that his treatment takes no account whatsoever of modal logic) or to truth-conditional semantics, considering the position he has staked out with regard to truth. The dictionary proceeds, then, with entries dedicated to Discursive semantics, Fundamental semantics, Generative semantics, Narrative semantics, Seme and Sememe, all, however, in a strictly Greimasian key.

The most balanced treatment is the one appearing in John Lyons’s two-volume
Semantics,
which represents a tolerant approach to all of the relevant traditions. Being on the one hand a linguist, exposed to the sirens of European theory, and on the other an insular Briton, did not prove a disadvantage for Lyons. But he does not formulate a theory, he expounds what has previously been said on the subject, and he can therefore afford to be ecumenical. Ecumenical, but hardly systematic.

Is ecumenism a
pis aller,
a necessity for the popularizer, or may it also be a theoretical choice? I would choose the second option. The problem of meaning is so complex that it is preferable to be syncretistic rather than a dogmatist and fundamentalist on the subject.

I remarked earlier that it is still a moot point whether or not semantics is concerned with the meaning of words (sense 1). It would appear that all we need do is pass from sense 1 to the subsequent meanings to accept that semantics is still concerned with meaning. It is arguable, however, whether the notion of meaning still enjoys citizenship rights in sense 3 (for some—for instance Quine—meaning can be shelved as long as one has a good theory of reference). Most interestingly, it is also debatable whether the notion of meaning (at least in the sense of a meaning conventionally agreed—sense 1) still has citizenship rights in sense 5. So long as, apropos of sense 5, we have in mind Greimas, in whom a generative semantics of texts is preceded by a structural semantics, there is no reason for this suspicion. But deconstructionists and Davidsonians, or those like Sperber and Wilson who subscribe to the theory of inference, can also be subsumed under sense 5.

Here meaning itself is called into question. In the case of Derrida, the denial of so-called transcendental meaning seems to be directed rather at the single meaning of a text (which he certainly calls into question) while sense 1 is not in question. In his
De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology)
he declares that, without the tools of criticism and traditional philology (including, I presume, dictionaries), interpretation could take off in any direction and consider itself authorized to say whatever it liked. Only he adds that this indispensable guardrail protects but does not initiate a reading, and he is evidently convinced that existing grammars and dictionaries are sufficient to protect a reading.

In the case of Davidson and the various theories of inference, he chooses to ignore the fact that terms have meanings fixed by the community (the ones provided by dictionaries) because what counts is that I take for granted that anyone speaking to me sees the world as I see it and intends to say what I would say in the same circumstances. It would therefore seem irrelevant that a boat be designated as a “boat,” because if someone were to say to me “Let’s get on that wagon,” pointing to a boat, I would understand, through the principle of charity, that he meant to refer to the boat and I don’t go splitting hairs about the “conventional” meaning of the terms.

The example, however, presupposes that all there is in front of us a boat, and not a boat and a wagon, and that the direction in which I am pointing is unambiguous. In the latter case, and in the absence of any further circumstantial indicators, if the speaker says “Let’s get on that wagon,” I understand that he wants to get on the wagon and not on the boat. This is a consequence of the fact that social and linguistic conventions assign two different meanings to the words “boat” and “wagon” independently of any context or act of charity. Of course, out of a principle of charity that, under the circumstances, would be tantamount to a “principle of malevolence,” I could always assume that the person speaking had a selection disturbance and said “wagon” whenever he meant “boat,” but we do not usually push the malevolence principle that far. We assume that there is a semantics in sense 1 involved, in which words have a certain meaning independently of any specific context.

Note that not even Davidson denies this evidence—see “Communication and Convention” (Davidson 1984b)—in which he asks himself if we need a convention to tie every word to a fixed meaning for all speakers, and assumes, as a condition of the existence of a convention, the position of Lewis, which is clearly more valid for poker than for languages. At this point Davidson realizes that we can even understand terms we are not familiar with and decides that all conventions are useful but not necessary. The argument is that we simply tend to speak like everyone else—and this would shift the problem of the existence of a code to that of consistency of usage.

To be quite frank, this strikes me as merely playing with words. Saying that we regularly associate the word “boat” with a floating vessel and saying that the code establishes that a boat is a floating vessel doesn’t change much. In fact when linguists speak of a code they are speaking of a statistical extrapolation from common usage: the
code de la langue
that De Saussure talked about is a fiction based on consistency of usage.