Introduction to Semantics

IN giving effect to our intention to investigate, by analysis of the various disciplines, what the term "semanties" means and what are its research problems, we pass from linguistics to logic. We thus come to the focus of the problems involved, for it is logic which, since the end of the 19th century, has become the field of semantic pursuits most closely related with philosophy. This is why we encounter here numerous difficulties, especially difficulties methodological in nature.

It is obvious that historical (linguistic) semantics too has significant philosophical implications. It is obvious that the various linguists engaging in semantic research take up quite definite philosophical positions (which they sometimes state plainly and openly) that make them solve semantic problems in specific ways. But in logical semantics the situation is different.

In linguistic semantics, we can easily separate purely linguistic analysis from this or that philosophical interpretation. It is only in exceptional cases, for example in de Saussure's system, that we have to do with a close, organic linking of the linguistic theory with a philosophical conception, so that the two cannot be separated mechanically. But what is involved here is an entire system of the science of language, and not merely studies in the history of meanings.

Now what tends to be an exception in linguistic semantics is a rule in logical semantics. This is so because, first of all, if we disregard the purely technical fields of logical calculi, logic is a philosphical discipline incapable of separation from epistemology and Weltanschauung. Secondly, it is so because the

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