Page 17 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 17
Lecture I
ances of a sentence should have informative or descriptive value is under-
standable. Indeed, you will then say that when you utter a sentence, you
are pointing out that the reality you are speaking about is such as to make
the sentence true. When I utter “It’s warm”, I am telling you that in the
world around us, the conditions making the sentence It’s warm true are ful-
filled. The utterances one produces in discourse provide information, they
describe the world, because those utterances consist in affirming that the
conditions that make the sentence uttered true are fulfilled. So, the inform-
ative conception of the semantic value of utterances is connected to what
I would call a truth-conditional or logical or again, – I think that would be
more precise, – pseudo-logical conception of the value of sentences. Sen-
tences are described in terms of truth and falsehood (that is the reason why
I call that conception of the semantic value of sentences a “logical” one) and
then, given that, you explain that the utterances of those sentences should
convey pieces of information about the world.
To my mind, it is that conception of meaning which is at the root of our
use of the word mean in ordinary conversation and, according to me, it is in
that sense that one must maintain that words do not mean anything. When
I say that words do not mean anything, I mean that words do not give data,
do not provide information about the world – or, at least, that they provide
information only in an extremely indirect way.
***
Most linguists, I think, have questioned that truth-conditional or pseu-
do-logical conception of the semantic value of sentences, which is related to
a descriptive conception of the semantic value of utterances, however com-
monplace that conception may be. I am therefore going to speak to you for
a while about the history of linguistics to try to show that for quite a few
centuries now, the majority of linguists have been questioning that truth-
conditional and informative conception of meaning. But I shall try to show
you that the doubts they have raised are not radical enough, not sufficient-
ly decisive: I shall try to introduce a hopefully more radical form of criti-
cism. I have said that most linguists had already questioned that concep-
tion, and I shall now give you a few examples. As a first example, I shall re-
mind you of things which were said in France by the Port-Royal grammar-
ians in the seventeenth century and which, with slight terminological dif-
ferences, were adopted and systematized by the Swiss linguist Charles Bal-
ly, at the beginning of this century. Then I shall try to show that their criti-
cism is not radical enough.
ances of a sentence should have informative or descriptive value is under-
standable. Indeed, you will then say that when you utter a sentence, you
are pointing out that the reality you are speaking about is such as to make
the sentence true. When I utter “It’s warm”, I am telling you that in the
world around us, the conditions making the sentence It’s warm true are ful-
filled. The utterances one produces in discourse provide information, they
describe the world, because those utterances consist in affirming that the
conditions that make the sentence uttered true are fulfilled. So, the inform-
ative conception of the semantic value of utterances is connected to what
I would call a truth-conditional or logical or again, – I think that would be
more precise, – pseudo-logical conception of the value of sentences. Sen-
tences are described in terms of truth and falsehood (that is the reason why
I call that conception of the semantic value of sentences a “logical” one) and
then, given that, you explain that the utterances of those sentences should
convey pieces of information about the world.
To my mind, it is that conception of meaning which is at the root of our
use of the word mean in ordinary conversation and, according to me, it is in
that sense that one must maintain that words do not mean anything. When
I say that words do not mean anything, I mean that words do not give data,
do not provide information about the world – or, at least, that they provide
information only in an extremely indirect way.
***
Most linguists, I think, have questioned that truth-conditional or pseu-
do-logical conception of the semantic value of sentences, which is related to
a descriptive conception of the semantic value of utterances, however com-
monplace that conception may be. I am therefore going to speak to you for
a while about the history of linguistics to try to show that for quite a few
centuries now, the majority of linguists have been questioning that truth-
conditional and informative conception of meaning. But I shall try to show
you that the doubts they have raised are not radical enough, not sufficient-
ly decisive: I shall try to introduce a hopefully more radical form of criti-
cism. I have said that most linguists had already questioned that concep-
tion, and I shall now give you a few examples. As a first example, I shall re-
mind you of things which were said in France by the Port-Royal grammar-
ians in the seventeenth century and which, with slight terminological dif-
ferences, were adopted and systematized by the Swiss linguist Charles Bal-
ly, at the beginning of this century. Then I shall try to show that their criti-
cism is not radical enough.
