31 SayingThinking and Thought

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same can be said of a rat in Spanish, una rata, in the feminine gender, although in fact ...... La rebelión de las masas (The revolt of the masses. Madrid: Austral.
Saying Thinking and Thought Logos, Reality, and Truth

Jesús Gerardo Martínez del Castillo

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Contents

Saying, Thinking and Thought ............................................................ 1 Logos, Reality and Truth..................................................................... 1 Contents .............................................................................................. 3 Foreword ............................................................................................ 9 Chapter 1: Linguistics as a Theory of Knowledge ............................. 19 1. Intuition, Knowledge and Science ................................................. 19 2. Types of Knowledge ..................................................................... 21 3. A Scientific Theory and Its Verification ........................................ 24 4. Theories and the Human Knowledge ............................................. 25 5. The Human Knowledge and The Real ........................................... 26 6. The Foundation of Theories in the Human Knowledge ................. 28 7. Types of Sciences.......................................................................... 29 8. Human Sciences: Language Study as a Theory of Knowledge. ..... 31 8.1. The Degree of Reality of Things............................................. 31 8.2. The Presence of Beliefs in Language Studies ......................... 34 8.3. The Presence of Beliefs in Theories: An illustration ............... 36 9. Substantive Being, an Underlying Asset in Theories ..................... 38 10. A New Way of Conceiving Things, the Real Being ..................... 41 11. The Adequacy of a Theory .......................................................... 42 11.1. The Adequacy of Theories in Natural Sciences ..................... 42 11.2. The Adequacy of Theories in Human Sciences ..................... 43 11.2.1. The Object of Study of Human Sciences ........................ 46 11.2.2. The Radical Reality Language Study ............................. 47 12. Human Dimensions Manifest in Language .................................. 48

Conclusion .................................................................................... 52 3

Chapter 2: Real Language ................................................................. 55 1. Language and the Speaking Subject .............................................. 55 2. Language as Something Internal to the Speaking Subject .............. 55 2.1. A Means to Overcome the Circumstance Human Subjects Are In

................................................................................................................. 56 2.2 Language Is for Others ................................................................ 56 2.3 Language Made in History .......................................................... 56 2.4 Language Is Purposeful ............................................................... 57 2.5 The Internal Arrangement of Things ........................................... 57 2.6 Internal Definition of the Speaking Subject ................................. 58 2.7 The Human Way of Knowing...................................................... 58 2.8 The Birth of Language................................................................. 59 2.9 Language and Form ..................................................................... 59 2.10 The Speech Act as the Internal Activity of Speaking ................. 60 2.11 Language as the Result of the Human Act of Knowing ............. 61 2.12 The Mental Problem Created in the Act of Knowing ................. 61 3. Language as Something External to Speakers ............................... 62 3.1 Historicity and the Process of Language Learning ....................... 63 3.2 Language as it Manifests Itself in Diálogos ................................. 63 3.2.1. Language and Logos ................................................................ 64 3.2.2 Language as a Language ........................................................... 65 3.2.3 Language as Speech.................................................................. 65 3.3 Problems Posed in Language Study and the Human Sciences ..... 66 3.4 The Activity of Speaking and Idiomatic Knowledge ................... 68 3.5 The State of the Language ........................................................... 69 4. Language as Something Autonomous ........................................... 70 5. Language and Speakers ................................................................. 73 4

Conclusion .................................................................................... 73 Chapter 3: Linguistics of Saying ....................................................... 75 1. Linguistics of saying. .................................................................... 75 2. Functions in linguistics of saying. ................................................. 77 2.1. The object of saying. .............................................................. 77 2.2. The object of knowing. ........................................................... 78 3. Intellective operations in the speech act. ....................................... 78 3.4. Creating a semantic class or essence (or a category). .............. 84 3.1. An initial intuition or aísthesis. ............................................... 79 3.2. Selecting from aíthesis............................................................ 80 3.3. Delimiting semantic objects or establishing a designation. ..... 81 3.3.1. Delimiting semantic objects involves two functions: ........... 83 3.5. Relating the construct created ................................................. 87 3.6. Giving the construct created a name ....................................... 88 3.7. Determining the construct created. ......................................... 91

Conclusion: ................................................................................... 94 Chapter 4: The Speech Act as an Act of Knowing............................. 95 1. Speaking and Knowing ................................................................. 95 2. Elements in Linguistics of Saying ................................................. 98 3. The Meaningful Intentional Purpose of the Individual Speaker ... 100 4. Syntactic Analysis ....................................................................... 101 5. Intellective Analysis .................................................................... 102

Conclusions................................................................................. 112 Appendix I: The Speech Act as an Act of Knowing .................... 113 Chapter 5: Meaning and Language .................................................. 115 1.

The Role of Meaning in Language........................................... 115

2. Meaning and Language Use ........................................................ 116 5

3. Speech Acts................................................................................. 120 4. Meaning and Speech ................................................................... 121 5. The Configuration of Speaking ................................................... 125 5.1. The Architecture of the Language......................................... 126 5.2. The Functional Language ..................................................... 127 5.3. The Structure of the Language .............................................. 129 5.4. A Technique of Speaking ..................................................... 130 5.5. Aspects in the Structure of the Language .............................. 130 6. The Configuration of Linguistic Contents ................................... 134

Conclusion .................................................................................. 137 Chapter 6: Meaning, What Is It ....................................................... 139 1. Introduction ................................................................................. 139 2. Defining Characteristics of Meaning ........................................... 140 2.1. Language is Meaning, the Conscience of Speakers ............... 141 2.2. Free Intentional Creations of Meanings ................................ 145 2.3.

Universality of Human Experience: Meaning vs. Designation ......................................................................................... 148 3. Corollary ..................................................................................... 149 3.1. Language Created the World ................................................ 149 3.2. Language is the Basis for Science to Be ............................... 150 3.3. Language is the Possibility of Knowledge ............................ 150 4. Types of Meaning ....................................................................... 154 4.1. Lexical Meaning ................................................................... 154 4.2. Category Meaning ................................................................ 157 4.3. Instrumental Meaning ........................................................... 158 4.4. Syntactic or Structural Meaning ........................................... 159 4.5. Ontic Meaning ...................................................................... 160 6

Conclusion .................................................................................. 161 Chapter 7: Modes of Thinking in Language Study .......................... 163 1. Introduction ............................................................................. 164 2. Modes of Thinking and Modes of Being ................................. 165 2.1. Modes of Thinking: The Concept of Substantive Being .... 170 2.2. The Modern Mode of Being: The Cartesian Mode of

Thinking ......................................................................................... 172 2.3. Modes of Thinking in the 20th Century.............................. 174 3. Language Study as an Act of Knowing.................................... 176 3. The Radical Reality ................................................................. 178

Conclusions................................................................................. 183 Chapter 8: Modes of Thinking and Language Change: The Loss of Inflexions in Old English ........................................................................ 185 1. Introduction ................................................................................. 185 2. The Mode of Thinking of the Anglo-Saxons ............................... 188 3. Vocabulary .................................................................................. 189 4. Describing Things as Processes ................................................... 190 5. Things Existing as Classes .......................................................... 193 6. No Towns or Countries but People .............................................. 194 7. Verbs Bēon/Wessan and Weorþan and the Passive ..................... 195 7.1. The Idea of Motion: Prepositional Phrases ........................... 196 7.2. Preposition Wiþ and Mid with the Dative or the Accusative . 197 7.3. Preposition On and Ofer and the Idea of Place as Part of a

Process ................................................................................................ 199 7.4. Examples with ofer: .............................................................. 202 7.5. The Idea of Place: Preposition in .......................................... 203 7.6. Prepositions On and Ofer and the Idea of Time .................... 205 8. Evolution in the Loss of Inflexions.............................................. 206 7

8.1. The Language in the 13th Century ......................................... 206 8.2. Relevant Facts in the Evolution of the Language in Connection

with Thought....................................................................................... 207 8.3. The Language in the 14th Century ......................................... 209 8.4. Relevant Facts in the Poem in Connection with Thought ...... 210 8.5. The Language of the Scotts in the 14th Century ..................... 211 8.6. Relevant Facts in the Poem ................................................... 212

Conclusion to the Loss of Inflexions ........................................... 213 Chapter 9: Logos, Reality, and Truth .............................................. 215 1.

Aspects and levels in the reality of speaking and knowing....... 215 A)

The reality lived by speakers. ............................................ 218

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The level of expression. Determination. ............................ 221

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The level of contents. The problems of reality and truth. ... 225 Two major problems: reality and truth. ................................... 226

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Modes of knowing, modes of thinking, modes of being of things and modes of saying. ................................................................................ 14 References used .............................................................................. 233

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Foreword In 2013 I first introduced the concept of modes of thinking, taken from the Spanish philosopher J. Ortega y Gasset, in the study of the human reality manifesting in language. The concept of modes of thinking involves the concepts of modes of being of things, and, since speaking involves the definition of speakers who rule themselves in accordance with the previous knowledge made up of beliefs and attitudes speakers adopted before speaking, the concept of modes of saying of speakers. Speakers can re-structure what surrounds them thus fabricating things and making their conscience, that is, creating and keeping thought in their conscience for future use. Language thus is something being made when speaking, that is, when speakers want to leave out of themselves, find out a listener, and discover what they have in their minds to achieve an aim or a purpose. In their turn, the listener will do their best to understand the speaker, and both will take turns in speaking and understanding thus creating διάλογος, that is, creating speech for someone else in a relationship of mutual understanding, collaboration, and participation. Language thus is born in διά-λογος (because of, by means of logos, that is, both saying and thinking, the reality lived) between a speaker and a listener, when word reverberates. Under the point of view of thought language constitutes something lived by speakers. Speakers intuitively conceive, create, acquire, perform, speak, say, evaluate, and even speak of language. They will speak, say, and know creatively, individually, and contingently in accordance with historic traditions in the technique of speaking thus involving others. They will use language thus making themselves human. They will evaluate language and even will speak of language as a series of entities (language, a language, meanings, words, speech, speech acts, speech sounds, competence, the correct use of expressions and words, etc.). That is, to speak of language speakers will have to objectify what, at the same time, is created by them in their conscience and comes to them from their conscience. This fact lets us distinguish two types of knowledge in 9

language study, the knowledge of speakers, the knowledge to speak, idiomatic knowledge, saber, linguistic competence, and the knowledge of linguists, an objectified knowledge executed as the mental representation of the things studied at the same time created and studied by them. To study language, linguists will usually have to consider language as an object. As a matter of facts, a language is nothing, but a series of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas offered to speakers as members of a speech community (=a language). Because of this, a language, any language, bears with it lots of attitudes, beliefs, and ideas constituting different modes of thinking with implicit modes of conceiving things and modes of saying in the circumstance speakers are involved in at any time of their history. Since linguists are at the same time speakers and linguists they will accept those series of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas as the only modes of thinking, modes of being of things and modes of saying (=the verbal behaviour by speakers) proper of their language. This attitude may not consider that those modes of thinking, implicit modes of being of things, and modes of saying are proper of their historic language. Ortega y Gasset formulated the concepts of modes of thinking and the implicit modes of being of things. For Ortega y Gasset, when a thinker states his thought he has previously devised the mode of thinking proper and implicit to his thought. This statement can be transferred to the study of language in the so-called linguistics of saying, a theory studying language in its birth, that is, when language is born as an objectification of the state of the mind being suffered (παθηµα)1 by speakers when speaking. For a speaker to speak, they will necessarily examine the state of the mind being suffered by them to devise the most efficient means of expression (understanding) and the most efficient relationships of signification (expressing). In language and language study when a speaker tries to say something

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ἔστι µέν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῃ φωνῆ τῶν ἐν τῃ ψυχῃ παθηµάτῶν σύµβολα (Aristotle, De Int. 16a, 3-4).

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he will previously create his thought by structuring what he lives in his conscience (thinking or mode of thinking) in accordance with he wants to say what he does. Since language is speaking saying and knowing, the speech act is nothing but the performance of an act of knowing made on the base of the previous knowledge (=original knowledge1) speakers have. Original knowledge is the conception speakers have about what they themselves as human beings and as speakers living in a linguistic world of humans are, about what their free activities are, about what things are. Because of this, speakers will use the modes of thinking, modes of being of things, and modes of saying in force in their language, concepts given to them by their language, that is, the tradition of speaking in their language. Consequently all speakers will develop, acquire, and reflect a kind of individual thought made on the base of the modes of thinking in vogue in the speech community they belong to. And since the peculiar mode of being of humans is being together-with someoneelse (otherness, Coseriu) they will develop and acquire that mode of thinking and that thought in participation and collaboration with their speaking mates2. The problem of modes of thinking applied to language, to the very production of language in speech, was posed by me in, Modes of Thinking, Language and Linguistics, a book published in Analecta Malacitana, anejo XCIV, 2013, ISBN 9-770211-934005. And later I published an article, “Modes of Thinking in Language Study”, in European Scientific Journal, December 2013, /SPECIAL/ edition vol. 4, pp. 421-431, ISSN: 1857 - 7881 (Print), e- ISSN 1857- 7431. After this, I tried to apply these ideas to the so-called Old English in “Language Change and Modes of Thinking: The Loss of Inflexions in Old English”, European Scientific Journal, February 2015, /SPECIAL/ edition vol. 1, pp. 341-357, ISSN: 1857 - 7881 (Print), eISSN 1857- 7431. These two articles were reproduced and enhanced

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“That type of a knowledge a human subject has about himself and his free activities (and of course about the aim of these activities (Coseriu, 1999, 36). 2 All these topics will be discussed in Chapter 9.

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in the special issue Linguistics of Saying in International Journal of Language and Linguistics, ISSN: 2330-0205 (Print); ISSN: 2330-0221 (Online), Special edition, Linguistics of Saying, vol 3, no 6-1, doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.201503061.20 and doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.21 And finally, I applied these concepts to the history of the Spanish language in a book published twice in 2017 in, Modos de pensar en la lengua española. Hechos de evolución y ontología lingüística. Buenos Aires: elapleph.com, ISBN 978-987-3990-24-3; and in, Modos de pensar y ontología lingüística. La lengua española vista, en su historia, desde el acto del conocer, Editorial Académica Española, 2nd edition, ISBN 978-3-639-53694-2. In this book I want to republish all articles dealing with the problem of modes of thinking and all aspects supposed to be the basis of the modes of thinking or included in it. Even more, I want to enlarge the theory of modes of thinking with the concepts of universes of knowing or modes of knowing, and known worlds expressed in the theory of determination by Coseriu. Chapter 9 introduces a discussion about modes of thinking, modes of being of things, and modes of saying and the concepts of modes of being and known worlds by Coseriu. Since this problem dealt with in this book is a problem in linguistics, the first chapter will be devoted to the study of the problems and foundation of linguistics, “Linguistics as a Theory of Knowledge”, published in Education and Linguistics Research, 1 (2), (2015), 62-84, ISBN 2377-1356, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/elr.v1i2.8368. Together with language and the theory of knowledge, both the problems of modes of thinking and modes of knowing involve the problem of the degree of reality of language. In this sense the second chapter will deal with “Real Language”, published in Education and Linguistics Research, 2 (1) (2016), 40-53, ISNN 2377-1356. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/elr.v2i1.8832 Since the problem of modes of thinking is to be studied when language is born, the third chapter will be implemented with the 12

article “Linguistics of Saying”, published in European Scientific Journal, December 2013 /SPECIAL/ edition vol. 2 ISSN: 1857 -7881 (Print), e – ISSN 1857-7431, pp. 441-451. And the fourth one deals with “The Speech Act”, published in European Scientific Journal, vol. 10, no 11, April Edition, ISSN 1857-7881 (Print), e-ISSN 18577431, pp. 1-13. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to the role meaning plays in language, and the definition of language with two articles published in the International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue, Linguistics of Saying, 3(6-1), doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.17 and 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.19 Chapter 7 will be devoted to the problem of modes of thinking proper in one of the articles mentioned above reproduced and enlarged in “Modes of Thinking in Language Study”. International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue, Linguistics of Saying, 3(6-1), 77-84. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.20 Chapter 8 is devoted to the application of the ideas involved in the problem of modes of thinking to a period of the history of the English language, based on the analysis of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other medieval texts in, “Modes of Thinking and Language Change: The Loss of Inflexions in Old English”. International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue, Linguistics of Saying, 3(6-1), 85-95, an article mentioned above as well. Apart from the articles published here I want to mention two series of articles, the first one published in 2016, in Education and Linguitics Research, ISSN 2377-1356, 2015 and 2016, Vols. 1 and 2, a group of 5 articles to be grouped under the heading “Linguistics of Speaking”, the theory by Coseriu, the first base of my ideas about language and language explanation. And a second group of 12 articles (four of them published here) dealing with the so-called “Linguistics of Saying”, the theory proposed by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, developed by me, starting with the act of knowing as the basis of language and the human life. These 12 13

articles were published in International Journal of Language and Linhguistics. Special Issue: Linguistics of Saying. Vol. 3, No 6-1, 2015, with the successive doi numbers between 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.11 the first one, and the last one with doi number 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.22 The last chapter, chapter 9, is just a synthesis of the problems dealt with in the book introducing the determination on the speech act in terms of its sense, validity and truth, problems having to do with the individual level of linguistic determination. This type of determination is performed at the level of contents, with the so-called previous knowledge speakers have before speaking and saying and the linguistic topics manifesting when speaking thus constituting the base of the interpretation of speech in terms of the human life. This book is intended to be an introduction to a prospective one to study modes of thinking in the English language, following with this the line of research inaugurated with the loss of inflexions in Old English, chapter 8, and similar with the books published about the Spanish language, Modos de pensar y ontología lingüística. La lengua Española vista, en su historia desde el acto del conocer, Editorial Académica Española, ISBN: 978-3-639-53694-2. The intended book will study the language in Beowulf, compare it with the language in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and texts of modern English. The aimed to result will analyse the facts of the evolution having prompted the evolution of the English language based on the modes of thinking, the modes of being of things, and the modes of saying. In the analysis of texts modes of knowing will be considered as well. Modes of thinking, modes of being of things and modes of saying versus modes of knowing. As an introduction, I want to separate the different concepts used in the explanation of topics as far as they are known and said. Modes of thinking, a concept by Ortega y Gasset and used by me in chapters 7 and 8 as well as in my book, Modos de pensar y ontología lingüística, 2017, relate to the modes of conceiving and expressing 14

topics in a language to be analysed at the level of contents. Modes of thinking involve two implicit concepts, modes of being of things and modes of saying. Both are to be analysed at the level of contents but modes of saying depend on the level of expression when analysed. Modes of thinking constitute a priori forms constituting the act of knowing although their performance is necessarily historic. Thanks to this, modes of thinking can be distinguished and studied in a language. For a Spanish speaker, who belongs to the tradition of speaking going back to Indo-European through Latin, the individual mode of thinking in the conception of things is always present in his expression. Example, estoy en mi casa (individual mode of thinking, with a determiner), but as in Latin, in some territories where the Spanish language is spoken (perhaps the most representative in Spain) the expression is estoy en casa (absolute mode of thinking, with no determiner). In Latin the usual expression was the absolute mode of thinking, for example, Caesar copias fluvium traduxit (with no determiners). On the contrary, modes of knowing or universes of knowing (chapter 9) relate to the previous knowledge speakers bear in mind before speaking and the topics dealt with. Previous knowledge is acquired by speakers from the tradition in the technique of speaking in the speech community they belong to about all aspects of knowing, that is, about human problems lived in terms of the reality of humans. Previous knowledge is constantly verified in the verbal behaviour of other speakers, their co-speakers. In this sense, contrary to modes of thinking, modes of knowing are necessary for the explanation of texts. Texts belong to the individual level of linguistic determination, a level in linguistic determination different from the universal and the historic levels. Universes of knowing or modes of knowing relate to the selection speakers make when referring or classifying things known and the topics created with language. For Coseriu, a mode of knowing is the universal system of signification any speech belongs to thus determining its value and sense. Modes of knowing are restricted to the speech determined in some way or another with 15

imagination. In this sense modes of knowing (universes of knowing), although universal in their nature because they relate to knowledge, are to be referred to known worlds or the sphere of objects in as much as they are known and said (chapter 9). In this sense insofar as they relate to known worlds they are historic, and insofar as they are executed in speech acts they are individual. The following example can manifest this, an hour before the worshipp'd sun peer'd forth the golden window of the east, a troubled mind drave me to walk abroad» (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene I) This text belongs to the universe of knowing of phantasy relating to the sphere of objects in the play Shakespeare. The contents in it are true since they constitute an autonomous mode of knowing in the contents it bears. It is universal, historic and individual in the way explained. Modes of being of things (chapter 7 and 8) relate to the way things are conceived. Modes of being of things are implicit in the concept of modes of thinking. If, for example, the defining mode of thinking of the Spanish language is the individual mode of being, this fact involves that things are conceived individually, just the contrary to the Latin mode of being of objects referred to. In Latin you can say that things, individual pragmatic affairs, do not exist but classes or categories, the defining mode of grouping objects referred ¾if this expression is possible¾ in Latin1. And finally, modes of saying relate to the linguistic behaviour of speakers thus having to do with words and the combination of words and expressions, that is, to grammar, syntax, meaning,

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In my book of 2017 referred to above I defend the thesis that there are no things in Latin but categories and classes. This fact was not so clear in Greek. Aristotle tried to emphasize the individuality of categories thus trying to describe thing individually in his Categories, but he could not find out the right explanation of the problem involved because he identified linguistic categories with categories in the real (see Martínez del Castillo 2011, Sobre las categorías, Buenos Aires).

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composition of words and sentences, and the attitudes prompted with beliefs and ideas in a language.

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Chapter 1: Linguistics as a Theory of Knowledge1 Abstract A theory of knowledge is the explanation of things in terms of the possibilities and capabilities of the human knowledge. The human knowledge is the representation of the things apprehended sensitively either through the sense organs or intuition. A theory of knowledge concludes about the reality of the things studied. As such it is a priori speculation, based on synthetic a priori statements. Its conclusions constitute interpretation, that is, hermeneutics. Linguistics as the science studying real language, that is, the language spoken, reverts to human subjects in as much as they speak say and know. Language thus must be studied as a theory of knowledge. This chapter deals with the study of language as the human activity of speaking, saying, and knowing. It analyses the possibilities of a scientific theory, its characteristics, and the pre-requisites to see if language can be studied. The fact of language reverting to the individual speaking subject makes linguists to consider the peculiarities of language study as a human science. Since human subjects are free creative and absolute, human facts cannot be but interpreted. This chapter concludes about the character of linguistics and the key points it must study and be based on. Keywords: Intuition, Knowledge, Human subjects, Original knowledge, Beliefs 1. Intuition, Knowledge and Science

Science is nothing but the justified development of an intuition on an object thus constituting it in the object of study and making a theory out of it. For example, a linguist may think over the reality usually called ‘language’, and have an intuition on it thus saying, language is an activity, the activity of speaking, saying and knowing. In this statement the linguist in question can analyse the following

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Published in, Education and Linguitics Research, ISSN 2377-1356, 2015, Vol. 1, No.2, 62-84, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/elr.v1i2.8368

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elements: language=activity; activity=something being performed by a human subject involving something done; speaking=an activity involving always and at the same time speaking saying and knowing; saying=the definition of the human subject before the circumstance he is in; knowing=the apprehension of being in things by the human subject. So, the linguist’s intuition in this very act has constituted something to study, language, to be identified with the object of study, once translated into words, language is the activity of speaking, saying and knowing, he has a theory about it. The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis made on the initial intuition, is that one can adopt a theory on an initial intuition, translated into words of a language, with a purpose (to study language), and an object of study (language in as much as it is the activity of speaking, involving speaking, saying and knowing). Since the linguist who had the initial intuition said above is at the same time a linguist and a speaker of a language his theory must be true, because as a speaker he has an internal experience of the universal, something known just because of intuition. As a statement, the theory can be formulated as, language as (the activity of) speaking involves speaking saying and knowing thus constituting its proper object of study. So, from now on, the linguist will not say language but the activity of speaking saying and knowing, or merely speaking. Since speaking involves speaking saying and knowing the linguist in question will have to study language in the elements it manifests itself, that is, in the speech acts. With this the supposed linguist can complete his theory with the establishment of facts. Since language manifests itself in speech acts, these ones will be considered the facts of his theory. And since speech acts are born just when speaking—they are individual, sporadic, momentary, and depend on contexts and situations, constituting the only elements in language with concrete existence— the assumed linguist can say that

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his theory studies language in its birth. Language is born whenever it is spoken1. The initial intuition due to its larger or lesser complexity is necessarily solved in a concept and this one in a statement and eventually in a set of statements or a theory. In other words: a theory constitutes the development of a statement as far as the statement is the development of a concept and the concept the formulation of an initial intuition. A theory then is nothing but a set of statements, either analytic (a priori) or extensive (synthetic a priori)2, referring a set of facts verified in the real, in experience, thus ending in a new set of statements3. In intuition, both the speaker or the scientist contemplate the object in its entire reality, either if this reality is analytic or a priori —a reality in the knowledge of which you do not need verification in experience, for example, 7+5=12—4, or synthetic5 —a reality justified on the base of verification in experience (sensibility) plus something added to the perception of the experience involved (=creation formed out of imagination through the intellect). Intuition, since it is sensitive (aísthesis, αἲσθησις, Aristotle)6, the “sensation affecting me and only me in a particular sense and in a moment”, is something one can or cannot have. Science consists in the justification and verification of an intuition in real objects just formulating a theory. 2. Types of Knowledge

Following with the example above, an initial intuition is made into a concept, the concept of “language as the activity of speaking saying and knowing”, and the concept made into a statement or series of statements, language is the activity of speaking saying and 1

Linguistics of saying, first formulated 2004; see Martínez del Castillo 2015aMartínez del Castillo 2015d 2 See Kant 2004, 47-52. 3 See Whorf 1956, 220-221; Popper 2002, Ch. 1. 4 Kant 2004, 47-52. 5 Ortega y Gasset 1989, 13-14. 6 De Anima, III, 1, 425 a 14.

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knowing. Speaking involves speaking saying and knowing. With these statements, the linguist of the example can analyse the reality of them in their elements, and say, language exists merely as the activity of speaking, saying, and knowing. Because of this, the linguist can conclude that language does not have concrete existence, and continue, but existence in the minds of speakers, the conscience of speakers. With this analysis the linguist gave universality and necessity to his statements, something added mentally (out of the intellect). So, the knowledge got so far is based on the linguist’s intuition (other linguists may have this intuition or may have other intuitions. Intuitions are not exclusive of anyone in particular). The initial intuition, since it is of sensitive character, is individual, but the thing added to it, the universality and necessity of the linguist’s statements, is something added by his intellect, not exclusive of his, but something in the linguist’s mind formed universally, historically, and individually1. Now the linguist must turn his eyes into the real, that is, into the different chunks of speech he can find in his daily life, that is, speech acts—the only facts of language capable to be verified in the real—, thus confirming that his intuition is right. But something must be remarked so far: it was the linguist’s intuition and from the linguist’s intuition that he concluded that language did not exist but in the conscience of speakers, etc. Because of this the linguist can say that the knowledge drawn from his intuition is a priori, that is, analytic. It was drawn from the very statement of the initial intuition with the help of the intellect thus looking for necessary connections2 in it. So, the reasoning performed so far constitutes deductive knowledge, based on the analysis of the concepts formulated in the statements, not needing anything else. Activity is something done, thus it has no concrete existence but

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See Coseriu 1992, 15-35. See Descartes in Ortega y Gasset 1992, 228.

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virtual1 existence. Language as an activity has not concrete existence either2. But sometimes, the great majority of times, conclusions cannot be drawn from an initial intuition because one cannot find necessary connections in it. In these cases, the scientist will have to verify the truth of his intuition in real things, although it is in one or a few items of the thing being analysed. The scientist, linguist or not, needs experience, that is, he must verify their statements in experience and then attribute necessary connections by means of their intellect. In these cases, their knowledge is not analytic but synthetic, fabricating synthetic a priori statements. It is a type of knowledge the truth of which is in the synthesis of both the initial intuition and experience, thus attributing necessary connections to the elements experienced based on analogy3. It is a synthetic knowledge since it combines intuition, which is sensitive (sensibility), verified in experience (reality), plus the necessary connections attributed to the combination, through the intellect with the help of imagination. It was imagination that found out how to justify what, for the scientist, was nothing but mute facts. It is the synthetic connection of an initial intuition and the intellect with the help of imagination. For example, once the linguist had an intuition (an interior experience), went out of his conscience and found out reality, he soon realized that the reality of the activity of speaking saying and knowing is performed differently in the different territories in the world. Because of this fact, in terms of the theory stated, the linguist considered this fact to be universal. That is, since it is impossible for anyone to verify this type of a statement in all speakers in all territories in the world, the linguist, based on analogy, added universality and necessity to his new intuition and felt entitled to say,

1

In a theory of knowledge, something is virtual when the extent of a meaning involves all possible, probable, existing, non-existing or imaginary items. 2 Coseriu 1988, 23. 3 Ortega y Gasset 1992a, 148.

23

as Coseriu does, whenever you speak you will speak in a language1. Since the linguist verified his initial intuition in the real and attributed necessary connections to their statements, the knowledge drawn by the linguist is both a priori and a posteriori, that is, it is constituted with synthetic a priori statement2. But in this fact lies the basis for another conclusion concerning the stated theory: there are two levels in the activity of speaking, one considering it as activity in it, language, and the execution of the activity of speaking, that is, a language. And insisting on this fact, a new level can be drawn, the individual performance of the activity of speaking in contexts and situations of both language and a language, that is, speech3. 3. A Scientific Theory and Its Verification

Once the scientist’s intuition is formulated and made into a concept, and this one into a statement, and the statement into a theory, establishing with it and in accordance with it, the object of study of the theory, thus delimiting at the same time which facts are likely to be used in the theory, the scientist must verify the execution of the theory in the real, thus delimiting the truth of the theory. Anything the scientist can verify by means of his theory is something implicit in the initial intuition. Hence that a scientific theory must necessarily be deductive, that is, all theories must develop the initial intuition in accordance with analytic or deductive method, that is, science is primarily knowledge a priori. Then guided with the theory, once the scientist deduced the reality of things just from the theory, the scientist can verify it in the real. In the real one can only verify what previously has been anticipated in the initial intuition. And this is the sense of knowledge a posteriori. Knowledge a posteriori is nothing but the verification of the thing intuited in the real. In this sense theories are a posteriori but previous to verification they constitute knowledge a priori. Knowledge a posteriori cannot exist unless in the verification of a previous intuition made into a statement. And

1

Coseriu 1982, 308. Kant 2004, 47-52. 3 See Coseriu 1992, 15-35. 2

24

this is something having to do with the truth of a theory. Except for a few theories, which are only analytic (mathematics, for example), the truth of theories is constituted with the combination of both knowledge a priori and knowledge a posteriori. They all are deductive and must be verified in the real (experience). Hence that science, the same as with the human knowledge, be constituted in a synthesis of sensibility and intellect by means of imagination, that is, science consists in a series of synthetic a priori statements, fabricated by scientists, from which, put together and in contrast with one another and verified in the real, scientists can draw conclusions, relationships, connections, facts of determination and implication. 4. Theories and the Human Knowledge

A theory has a four-fold purpose: to constitute itself out of an intuition, to constitute its object of study, to state which pragmatic things constitute facts of that theory, and to establish the degree of reality of the pragmatic things it studies either mental or objective. A theory, if true, will make science. It will not however constitute all science, but only an interpretation of the things studied1 in a double sense: first as elements constituting classes and then verifying those classes as individual. What is attributed to the class is considered universal to be applied to all items in the class. What is considered individual must always be liable to be verified. Because of this, the degree of reality of the initial intuition on which the theory lies must correspond with the degree of reality of the object of study. Something is real in as much as the concept of it, necessarily expressed in words of a language, describes what it represents2. The human knowledge as it has been explained earlier, is not a direct apprehension of things, but a symbolic representation of them, consisting in the translation from the realm of the concrete and sensitive into the realm of the mental3. The problem of the reality of things has to do with the peculiarities of human act of knowing.

1

Ortega y Gasset 1987, 190. Ortega y Gasset 1992, 194. 3 Ortega y Gasset 1989, 41-42. 2

25

5. The Human Knowledge and The Real

Pragmatic affairs, material and immaterial, concrete (=sensitive) and abstract, surrounding the human subject, constitute the so-called “things”, “the real”, or “reality”. As such they constitute something outside the conscience of speakers. The problem with knowledge and thus with science consists in explaining how to approximate to the real and apprehend it. This approximation, by means of the sense organs, gives the human subject the real aspect of things, that is, it gives a sensual image of what things really are or constitute their reality. The knowing subject approximates to things both mentally and physically. The only means the human subject has to approximate to them is their sense organs, their intellect and their imagination. The knowing subject must use these faculties to overcome their circumstance. This approximation constitutes what it is usually called knowledge. The knowing subject as a living being is in a circumstance and must do something to survive1. To survive the human subject can use the things surrounding him to his convenience. The first thing the knowing subject must do to survive is to eat, for example. When a human subject eats an orange, for example, he can perceive the orange in what an orange really is to him in his circumstance: it is something needed for him to survive. For him, it is un-important if the orange is juicy or not, if it is soft or hard, has colour, or scent, etc. The knowing subject in the need of surviving merely considers it as food, something necessary for him in his circumstance2. For the human subject in this circumstance, eating is apprehending, perceiving, and assimilating what he needs in his surviving in the world. This is the first aspect of the human way of knowing: the knowing subject can apprehend, perceive, and assimilate something through his sense organs, because he lives and needs the thing apprehended for his overcoming his circumstance, his surviving in

1 2

Ortega y Gasset 1994, 190. Ortega y Gasset 1994, 190.

26

the world. This type of knowledge is very similar to the knowledge of animals. But together with eating or living that orange, the knowing subject can apprehend that the orange of the example is juicy, has a colour, a form, a rough peel and stones, it is given in trees, etc. These characteristics of the orange are perceived through the sense organs as well. Since the human subject wants to make real knowledge of the thing apprehended, he needs the contribution of his imagination and intellect to finding necessary connections in the thing apprehended. The orange as it presents itself before the knowing subject is an individual thing. The intellect neglects individual notes and looks for necessary connections in the thing apprehended. In this sense the knowing subject apprehends an individual item but creates the class the individual thing perceived belongs to. Because of this, the apprehension of things by knowing subjects is double. It is made up of something real and something added to the real, thus making a mental representation of the thing apprehended. Because it is a mental representation it is something in the knowing subject’s conscience, thus constituting something they can keep for future use. But the mental representation created, with the help of the intellect and imagination, is not the thing the knowing subject apprehended and thus the thing known, but an image of the pragmatic thing called an “orange”, now representing all possible items of the class of things called an “orange”. That is, with the help of the intellect and imagination, the knowing subject created a class on the base of an individual thing. So, the real thing, the one the knowing subject apprehended through his sense organs, and the one represented in his conscience constitute two different things. The former cannot be but lived, the latter constitutes something the nature of which is mental. The knowing subject made a transformation of the nature of the real thing lived. The former is sensitive and concrete, the latter mental and abstract. The former is constituted only with an individual item, but the latter is and represents a class of objects. And this is the peculiar way of approximating to real things by humans, that is, the exclusive way of conceiving things by human subjects. 27

Things are changed in what they are thus translating them from the sensitive and concrete into the mental and abstract1, something liable to be kept in the conscience of speakers and be manipulated by the subject to their convenience. Since it is the representation of the thing perceived, the human act of knowing is not mechanical but free2, that is, creative and transcendent. So, the human knowledge is nothing but the translation from the way of being of things (1), into the imaginative representation of the real (2), in their conscience (3), to dominate the things surrounding the human subject (4), to survive (5) in the circumstance he is in. The human knowledge thus is to be distinguished from animal knowledge in these five characteristics. 6. The Foundation of Theories in the Human Knowledge

Similar to the human act of knowing, science starts with real things (4), represents them in a theory (2), thus making a translation from the real into the mental (1), fabricating an image of them mentally (3), expressing the theory in a series of statements and words of a particular language (3), in order to dominate things and the world (4). But two things differ in science from knowledge. The human knowledge is necessary in all humans, but science is optional and thus contingent. On the other hand, the human knowledge enables humans surviving in the world, but science aims at recreating things in the world linguistically thus representing them in the classes they may form. Science, the same as with the act of knowing, being in principle individual and thus subjective, is made social on the base of, (a) the statement of it in words of a language; (b) the adequacy of the theory to the object of study; (c) the certainty of the theory; and (d) the purposes the theory aims at. The statement of the theory in words of a language involves another type of transformation in the way of being of the things conceived after the initial intuition: a transformation from the mental into the linguistic. The adequacy of a theory to the object of study is something defining the theory as 1 2

Ortega y Gasset 1989, 41-42. Coseriu 1988, 194-196.

28

adequate. The certainty of the theory has to do with the character and definition of the theory, thus separating human sciences from the natural sciences, also called reality sciences1. And the purposes of the theory have to do with the aims the theory. The statement of the theory in words of a language means the creation of the theory with a peculiarity: things represented in the words and statements of a theory coincide with things designated. So, words of a theory are defined in terms of the real things they describe. This means that the words and expressions of a language in a theory are no longer linguistic, but form part of a terminology or nomenclature2, that is, they mean what they are defined for in the theory and cannot be altered. Language, on the contrary, attributes and delimits modes of being to things3. 7. Types of Sciences

The fact that human objects relate to the human life lets us separate two types of sciences: natural sciences vs. human sciences; or said in a different way, natural or physical sciences vs. a theory of knowledge. Natural sciences start with assumptions, either real or fabricated. So, the value and truth of the assumption adopted constitutes the perspective to be imposed on the things studied making them real4, either if the assumption is real or fabricated. Human sciences, on the contrary, if they want to be real and true, must start with human facts determined with the so-called original knowledge of speakers5. The problem with human sciences consists in determining the degree of reality of the object they study and finding out the radical reality, thus neglecting all possible beliefs in the formulation of theories about the human reality and interpreting

1

Ortega y Gasset 1983, 73. Coseriu 1985, 43; Coseriu 1981, 96. 3 See Coseriu 2006, 73-74. 4 Something is real if it is conceived, denoted (or described) and referred to accordingly. 5 Coseriu 1999, 36. 2

29

it. Beliefs in human sciences prevent researchers to reach truth and reality. So, in sciences the most basic and radical distinction to be made is determined by the degree of reality of the object of study. There is a radical and absolute science studying the absolute, that is, the human. And there is an indefinite number of natural sciences (or reality sciences), studying partial aspects of reality. The first one is constituted with philosophy and those sciences the object of study of which is constituted with the human. The other ones, natural sciences, which are many, start with conceiving a fact under a perspective, assumed it to be true, and interpreting things in the way assumed. These ones will never ask for the foundation their assumptions rely on. The former, philosophy and the human sciences, advance backwards, that is, they are to be developed looking for the radical reality they are based on to interpret the human reality. In this sense human sciences will eventually end up in a theory of knowledge. Natural sciences, on the contrary, will always advance forwards, because, for them, nothing exists prior to the assumption adopted. The sciences of the absolute basically bear with the problem of human knowledge and its foundations. Natural sciences omit the problem of knowledge and advance from their assumptions, either if they are beliefs or not, thus constituting the starting point for them. Both types of sciences, however, are deductive and must verify their conclusions. Philosophy and the human sciences, once identified the radical reality, this one constitutes the initial and ultimate truth. Anything in the radical reality must manifest itself in the elements drawn from it in some way or another. In natural sciences, on the contrary, the fact considered under a perspective and constituting an assumption considered to be the starting point, is to be imposed on the things studied. They all constitute an act of

30

knowing, they all perform the synthetic connection of (the initial) intuition1. 8. Human Sciences: Language Study as a Theory of

Knowledge.

8.1. The Degree of Reality of Things A theory is the creation of a set of concepts made into statements to interpret reality2. Interpreting things involves conceiving things as real, certain, and true. Conceiving things as real has to do with the object of study of sciences, something looking at the outside of the theory. The second and third aspects depend on the internal coherence of the theory: the formulation and statements of a theory must be coherent and logical. It cannot present any contradiction. The interpretation made with theories does not entirely depend on the initial intuition. An initial intuition, as an act of knowing, responds to the way of conceiving things in a speech community (=a language). In some way or another science, the formation of a theory and the establishment of the object it studies answer to the mode of conceiving things proper of this or that speech community. In this sense, for speakers, speech communities constitute communities of thought. Things apprehended and known by human subjects living in a speech community are apprehended and learnt in a double sense. Some are apprehended directly by the speaking subjects as creators of their ideas. These ones are acquired and learnt individually, with effort and conscious participation. They form part of a subject’s ideas and experience. But the great majority of ideas in a subject’s background are given to him in the tradition, just because in some way or another, he accepted them at a moment in his life, with no conscious participation in the formation of them. These ideas

1 2

See Kant 2004, 47-52. See Ortega y Gasset 1966, 119.

31

constitute beliefs, existing in speaking subjects without their conscious intervention. As members of a speech community speaking subjects speak just like others1. This means that speaking subjects will accept the ideas in vogue in the community of thought the speaking subjects are born and live in. The tradition of speaking in this way constitutes the base of the individual subject’s thought2. When scientists try to create a theory, they do not usually analyse things in what they really are but will accept the concepts and ideas representing things as they are given in their community of thought. Because of this, it is necessary to analyse and revise the initial intuition to see if the thing intuited is real or, on the contrary, if it is the result of the blind acceptance of ideas in vogue in the tradition of speaking. This fact in principle is not a hindrance to the truth and adequacy of a theory if you deal with things in the world. However, if you deal with the human manifestations it is necessary to analyse the degree of reality of the things to be studied. In scientific study one can find different degrees of reality of things. The thing first intuited may appear as existing in itself; then the problem will consist in devising the methods to analyse it. It is the case of natural and concrete objects, for example, trees. Trees, either in the concept they are denoted in or in the real are given in themselves. So, a scientist can say that from the point of view of science there is no difficulty in isolating trees from the reality they are given in. In accordance with this a scientist in the case of natural and concrete objects can start with the reality given in this or that language. The problem will be different if the scientist wants to study properties of things such as colour. Colour appears in it linguistically, but it really appears on a surface. However, it is real since it can be verified: it can be seen because it appears objectively. The problem with it consists in devising the method to study it. In this way determining the degree of reality of the thing to be studied is not problematic either. The scientist can easily isolate it mentally

1 2

Coseriu 1985, 15. Martínez del Castillo 2013.

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because it is objective and can be perceived through the sense organ of sight. In the world of things given in the tradition of speaking (=the world of meanings) of a language many other types of objects are transmitted. Some of them may be transmitted as if they were entities, denoting something independent, but in fact they have no concrete existence. Determining the degree of reality denoted in this case may be problematic. It is the case of realities such as language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity, etc., semantic objects existing as real, with the capacity of being conceived in themselves objectively, linguistically, and mentally. The problem with them is that they cannot be verified directly in the real, at the most indirectly. If these realities constituted as objects of study are concrete, the degree of reality they have must be concrete as well. If they are abstract, or cultural, or immaterial the degree of reality they have must be abstract, cultural or immaterial. And here the problem lies. They must have the degree of reality of the reality they depend on, if any. So, it is necessary to find out the reality they depend on. In a primary analysis one can see that these concepts or realities (language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity) are not independent, they depend on the human subject who speaks, thinks, acts or creates. So, the solution is finding out the radical reality1, that is, the reality constituting the support of all these concepts and realities. Determining degree of the reality of language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity is impossible unless the scientist goes back to the human subject, the agent who created these concepts and realities with his capability of knowing. The human knowledge is creative, that is, it creates a symbolic representation of the thing conceived. This is so because human subjects are free and their capacity of both creating and knowing is the same. Language does not exist unless it is in the human subjects who create it whenever they speak. And the same can be said of the mind, freedom, and

1

Ortega y Gasset 1996, 40-41. See section 11.2.

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creativity. They all depend on the human subjects in a double sense. Human subjects create those concepts and realities (language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity) first as concepts and realities known, and second as concepts and realities always being made when they are spoken and said of. In both cases they revert to the human capacity of knowing. So, making a mental symbolic representation of a previous mental symbolic representation would lead the linguist to an infinite regress. So, in determining the degree of reality of these concepts and realities (language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity) it is necessary to analyse the connection they have with their creators. Because of this, the usual way of creating theories explained so far is not valid. It is necessary to make a theory referring them to the subjects who, at the same time, intuitively conceive, create and perform those concepts and realities referring them to the human conscience. These realities cannot be studied unless they are interpreted in a theory of knowledge. A human subject creates his knowledge with the intervention of his sense organs (initial intuition, αἲσθησις), his intellect and imagination, the same faculties creating and performing or having created and performed the objects to study, always being created in a different way by all speakers whenever they are spoken and referred to. Determining the degree of reality of objects, then, consists in looking for and finding out the reality they depend on for their existence. Human objects are nothing but the symbolic representation of partial aspects of the human life, the human reality. They all must be interpreted in terms of the totality they depend on. The reality objects may depend on is called the radical reality. If the starting point, the initial intuition in a theory is not real enough, it will be abandoned when a previous one is found out. If this one is not real enough either, it will be abandoned again. And so forth till finding the radical reality.

8.2. The Presence of Beliefs in Language Studies Sometimes what the scientist may consider an initial intuition is based on a previous concept not usually recognized as a concept thus 34

constituting a belief. In this sense scientific theories entirely depend on the peculiar mode of knowing of humans. As we saw earlier the human knowledge is active. It is the activity of a free1 and historic2 subject, that is, a subject making himself in participation with others in a speech community in a period of history. Since the knowing subject is creative because he is free, human knowledge is the result of human freedom. But since the knowing subject is a historic subject, he accepts many ideas coming from the tradition of speaking the subject is born and lives in. This problem must be recognized in human sciences. Human sciences different from natural sciences must necessarily start, not with an assumption, a hypothesis, or the like, but the radical reality or the so-called original knowledge by Coseriu3. The problem with human sciences is in beliefs and the aim of them is to avoid beliefs. Collective beliefs constitute something unquestionable in the human life so that everything in a human life depends on them4. This fact is due to the character of the human knowledge, at the same time creative and historic. It is creative because it is always new. And it is historic because it includes and accepts forms of knowing, sometimes beliefs, accepted from the tradition in vogue in a speech community or community of thought. When forms of knowing are common, that is, participated by speakers in a speech community they constitute modes of thinking. For Ortega y Gasset, men live based on beliefs acquired all along their lives. A human being as a child lives of his perceptions, but as an adult, the extremely rich contents in his memory and in particularly the “theories known” or accepted from the tradition, act constantly against perceptions thus omitting the consistency of them and making them mere utensils of his remembrances, thus

1

Coseriu 1985, 32, Coseriu 1988, 43. 3 Coseriu 1999, 36. 4 Ortega y Gasset 1986, 99. 2

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constituting his world known1. But the problem with this is that adults are not conscious of the existence of those beliefs and prejudices in them. The influence of beliefs is so strong that they constitute the great component in the human life so that they are usually accepted as if they were the real truth2. Since human subjects make themselves in history and accept ideas from the tradition, any man, in a moment of history bears with him the ideas having influenced and formed his civilization. Ortega y Gasset says of the man living at his time (1883-1955): “Considered in his performance in history any person [in the Western World] is a Stoic, a Christian as Saint Augustine, a Christian as Saint Thomas Aquinas, later on as Saint Francis of Assisi, and later as Erasmus or Vives, or different from these, as saint Ignatius; and then he gives up being a Christian and a Rationalist and today [1934] he is an Arbitrary (Ortega y Gasset 1986: 101)”

And following with this line of thought we could add: and today, nearly one century later, he is, as well, a Marxist and a disMarxist, a Naturalistic and an Ecologist.

8.3. The Presence of Beliefs in Theories: An illustration Initial intuitions in the creation of theories about language may be based on previous concepts. A linguist, for example, may start with the belief that language is something existing, something being in it, something there in front of you, that is, something objective. Since this conception is a belief, the linguist did not ever realize that this way of conceiving language was the usual way of conceiving concrete things in western languages. So, this belief constitutes something acquired by him thinking it is the right way of conceiving language. The linguist of the example may be convinced that his intuition just had in the moment of formulating his theory that

1 2

Ortega y Gasset 2004, 820. Ortega y Gasset 1986, 100.

36

language is innate1 may be the starting point to create a theory about language since, at first sight, nothing is prior to this statement. On the other hand, since physical sciences start with assumptions, he may take his intuition as an assumption or rather as a hypothesis2. Since the linguist in question believes that language is objective and exists in it, a concept never discussed, he may consider it licit to assume his intuition to be a hypothesis. So, in terms of the internal logic3 of the hypothesis established as an assumption, he can draw the following conclusions. Since language is innate (objective and exists in it) it is an organ4, or a faculty5, similar with the visual system6: at the beginning the baby cannot speak, that is, it does not have the competence or faculty of speaking, but later, because of physical growth, the child acquires the faculty of speaking. That is, because of analogy, he can draw the conclusion that language sprouts with growth because it is objective, the same as with the visual system, merely that the language organ has not been found out so far. But it will since it is a hypothesis of research: it must be somewhere either in the brain7, or the human biology8. As a matter of facts brains and minds constitute the same thing. They are objective as well and, as the thesis of emergent properties by Vernon Mountcastle would state, “Things mental, indeed minds, are emergent properties of brains”, it is very easy to accept that, “These emergences are not regarded as irreducible but are produced by principles that control the interactions between lower-level events —principles we do not yet

1

Chomsky 1965, 25-27. Chomsky 1965, 30. 3 Popper 2002. 4 Chomsky 2002, 64. 5 Chomsky 1992, 68; Chomsky 1992, 70-71 and Chomsky 1992, 171. 6 Chomsky 2002, 64. 7 Chomsky 2000, 77. 8 Chomsky 2002, 64. 2

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understand”1. If these two hypotheses are combined, the linguist in question can draw the conclusion, based on analogy as well, that language is something natural2. This confirms the previous intuition that language is an organ or a faculty. So, language is part of human biology and should be studied in biology3. Language thus would be something growing with age, something developing as a faculty, something existing in it, not needing anything else to be but the physical growth of one’s body. Since language is natural and considering the variety of languages there must be a universal grammar4, and the mechanisms of language learning —objective since they belong to the body—should be innate as well5. Hence that in the latest formulation of Chomsky’s theory language should be studied in a naturalist approach6, considering ‘linguistic’ at the same level as ‘chemical’, ‘electrical or ‘optical’, “to select a complex of phenomena, events, processes and so on that seem to have a certain unity and coherence”7. With this, one can see how language, for Chomsky, manifests itself: it is “a complex of phenomena, events, processes […], that seem to have a certain unity and coherence”, just because it is natural, exists in it and is objective. 9. Substantive Being, an Underlying Asset in Theories

The underlying conception not mentioned by its author is the way of conceiving things: things are conceived in such a way as if they were entities. They all, concrete and abstract, are considered to exist, that is, they all have the same degree of reality as real entities. Language as something in the human life is conceived as a thing. At the most, it may be conceived as an emergent property of brains, which, since brains exist in themselves and are objective, language must be objective too. Chomsky, not posing the problem of how to

1

Chomsky 2002, 55. Chomsky 1965, 25-27. 3 Chomsky 1984, 40-43. 4 Chomsky 1965, 25-27. 5 Chomsky 1965, 27. 6 Chomsky 2000. 7 Chomsky 2000, 134. 2

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conceive things, but accepting the traditional conception transmitted through the western languages that “being is existing in it”, out of his initial intuition that language is innate concludes about the objectivity of language. In the history of thought, this way of conceiving things is the so-called substantive being thus acting as a non-formulated belief. The ultimate reason for the existence of language thus is its existence as something contrary and opposing its non-existence (non-language). And this is something that can be verified in the real: human beings speak (=they have language) but animals do not (=they do not have language but the contrary, nonlanguage, except for bees1). So, the concept of language deduced from the non-formulated belief that being is existing in it and objectively constitutes the basis for the formulation of a theory about language. Because of this Chomsky´s initial intuition that language is innate cannot be but a hypothesis2 not yet found in the real. This way of conceiving things as existing, that is, as entities constitutes a belief coming to us from the Greeks. Parmenides (ca. 540/539 B.C.) said of Being that you can say nothing of it. The only thing you can say is that “Being is and it is impossible for it not to be”. And together with this he added, “Being is and Non-Being is not”. Consequently, “Being is one, timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging”3. This constitutes the first formulation of substantive being4 in force all around the Mediterranean and broadcast all over the world through the Greek-Latin-Western Civilization, not existing outside the Western World. The concept of substantive being is not given in Hopi5, a native language in Arizona; it is not found either in Ewe, a language in Togo6; nor was it in primitive Hebrew7. On the other hand, contrary

1

Chomsky 2002, 56. Chomsky 1965, 30. 3 Ferrater Mora, Dictionary of philosophy. 4 Ortega y Gasset 1971, 38. 5 Whorf 1956, 258. 6 Benveniste 2007 vol. I, 71-72. 7 Ferrater Mora, Dictionary of philosophy 2

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to this criticism, conceiving things as existing in them objectively (substantive being) has given rise to three important and decisive facts in the formation of the so-called Western Civilization: a) monotheism. The three monotheist religions were born around the Mediterranean: Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim. They are absolute and claim to be the true one before the others; b) the concept of things, conceived as if they existed objectively; and c) the concept of science. Science in the Western World is objective thus giving rise to technics and technology, a series of sciences having been developed because facts based on assumptions conceived as if they were entities. In the Eastern World, on the contrary, Wisdom is subjective thus aiming at the perfection of individuals. At the beginning, in Old Greece, ideas, that is, the essences representing classes were conceived as if they could be touched. The Aristotelian concept of νους, ‘intellect’, meant approximating things through the sense organs, θινγανειν, that is, ‘touching’1. That is, ideas were conceived as entities, at the same level as real things. Later, with the introduction of the Cartesian mode of thinking2, the introduction of positive-ness in science (Galileo), the development of technics especially since 1750, and today with technology things are conceived as individual and objective in the Western World, that is, as entities3. The underlying ideas in the concept of substantive being can be summarized in four: a) being is a class. In Olden Times things were not conceived as individual but as classes. In Latin, for example, things were individualized with contexts and the cases, not with articles. In Old English, 5th to 11th centuries included, words did not mean individual things but processes4. Old English numerals were structured in larger classes (hund, scōru, dozein(e) thus meaning merely an approximation: And hē rīcsode nigontēoþe healf gear, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annal 855); literarily, “And he reigned up to

1

Ortega y Gasset 1992, 330. See Martínez del Castillo 2013a. 3 See Martínez del Castillo 2013a 4 See Martínez del Castillo 2015e, 85-95. 2

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the nineteenth half year”, that is, and he (approximately) reigned eighteen years and a half; b) being is absolute in the sense that it exists in it; c) being is objective, that is, it “can be touched”, since it is performed in the real; and d) being is together with its contrary thus involving and opposing non-being, nought. 10. A New Way of Conceiving Things, the Real Being

But it was not up to the 20th century (in the Western World) that individual things were considered to exist as individual, that is, as real, presenting themselves before the intelligent subject capable of knowing. Things are no longer entities but are to be considered in the function they perform in the connection established with the knowing subject. Since Descartes (1596-1650), things were conceived in terms of the knowing subject. With this, the conception of things, either concrete or abstract, constitute real things in as much the concept in the knowing subject relates to the function they perform for the intelligent subject. That is, the knowing subject acts on things and things act on the subject1. For example, language is something created by the human subjects. Notwithstanding, language at the same time imposes on the subject who created it. The speaking subject lives language, that is, he intuitively conceives (=has language in its entire reality mentally), creates, acquires, performs, speaks, says, uses, evaluates, and even speaks of language2. At the same time the speaking subject must adapt his speech to the requirements of language in the performance and use of it. And with this, one can see that describing language is something implicit in the action of speakers on language: speakers, apart from having an intuition on language, creating, acquiring, performing, speaking and saying, and using language can evaluate and speak of language. Because of this, linguistics is nothing but the interpretation of the

1 2

Martínez del Castillo 2013, 28-29. Martínez del Castillo 2013, 28-29.

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verbal behaviour of speakers1. But there is a difference between speakers and linguists: speakers justify their speech primarily, that is, intuitively and based on the function of forms and based on the tradition of speaking, but linguists must justify language in full2. 11. The Adequacy of a Theory

11.1. The Adequacy of Theories in Natural Sciences The adequacy of a theory is determined both externally and internally. A theory is determined externally if it is adequate to the object it studies. A theory is determined internally if it is certain, that is, if the theory does not present any contradiction in its terms. The adequacy of the theory to its object of study constitutes the so-called the verum. The certainty of the theory constitutes the certum3. The combination of both, if adequate and certain, proves that the theory is true. This distinction in the determination of theories has to do with the two faces of the concept: the one looking at the outside, and the one looking at the inside4. For K. Popper, science is not a system of concepts but a system of statements. Scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas of purely speculative kind, a faith completely unwarranted from the point of view of science. For him, it is necessary to analyse the logical consequences of the theory to point out its fertility, that is, its power to elucidate the problems of the theory of knowledge5. With this, Popper explicitly connects science with the human knowledge. The connection of the human knowledge with science is to be established in what he calls the logic of scientific discovery, that is, the certainty of the theory. All theories must be tested for adequacy with what Popper calls the deductive testing of theories and the problem of demarcation. The deductive testing of theories consists in analysing theories and

1

Coseriu 1992, 100. Coseriu 1992, 230-234. 3 Coseriu 1986b, 70. 4 Ortega y Gasset 1992. 5 Popper 2002, 10-16. 2

42

selecting them in accordance with the results achieved, in accordance with four criteria: a) analysis of the internal consistency of the theory; b) analysis of the logical form of the theory to determine if it has the character of an empirical or scientific theory, or it is, for example, tautological; c) comparison of the theory with other theories; and d) testing the theory with the empirical applications of the conclusions drawn from it. If the theory does not pass these tests, it is falsified and must be rejected1. The problem of demarcation is prior to the tests said in the previous paragraph. It consists in finding the criterion to distinguish between empirical sciences and mathematics, logic and metaphysical systems. The problem of demarcation emphasizes the diversity of sciences (see Section 8). The criterion of the problem of demarcation manifests that all theories depend on the human knowledge and thus are based on a theory of knowledge. In the end science, for Popper, is nothing but the application of the rules requesting the human knowledge just because all theories are necessarily expressed in words of a language. The adequacy of the theory is stated when it is verified in the real. The certainty of the theory is verified when the principles of knowledge prove that the theory is formulated on necessary connections. Science and theories depend on the characteristics of the human knowledge. Theories, the same as with the human, represent reality sensitively and mentally. Sensitively since they are a reproduction of the real, based on analogy; and mentally since they create the universal to be applied to the real. In this sense they are transcendent in the Kantian sense.

11.2. The Adequacy of Theories in Human Sciences In the case of human sciences, the adequacy of a theory depends on the certainty the scientist has about his nature as a human subject. In human sciences the verum and the certum coincide. This fact makes human sciences specific. In the case of language studies, the

1

Popper 2002, 9-10.

43

linguist is both a speaker and a scientist. In this way, the linguist knows beforehand what language is and how it functions. The linguist must justify what he previously knows. And this justification cannot be done unless it is an interpretation of facts in terms of a theory of knowledge. But this problem is sometimes neglected in language study. In present-day linguistics there are two types of theories: those theories considering language as something objective, existing in it and independent from speakers; and those theories considering language as something given in the human subject, something subjective. The separation of both conceptions is very radical. In the first case language is considered an entity existing somewhere. In the second case language is the manifestation of the nature of the speaking subject. As such language is not an entity: it does not exist in it independent from the human subject. Language is born whenever it is spoken. In the two different approaches to language one can see two objects of study completely different. In the first case the object of study is language in as much as it is conceived as if it was a natural object. In the second case the object of study is not language but the human speaking saying and knowing subject, manifesting his intelligence and freedom when he speaks. In the first case linguistics is dealt with as a natural science; and in the second it must be dealt with as a theory of knowledge. Since language under the first consideration is objective, some authors feel the necessity to base language referred to the mass of speakers1, society2, nature3, psychology4, cognition5, or to study it in a naturalistic approach6 or even in biology7. So, the different

1

De Saussure 1974, 145. Searle 1969; Eco 1972. 3 Austin 1988. 4 Chomsky 1957; Chomsky 1965; Chomsky 1968; Chomsky 1980; Chomsky 1981; Chomsky 1984; Chomsky 1995; and Chomsky 2002. 5 Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1990; Langacker 1986; Langacker 1991. 6 Chomsky 2000. 7 Benitez Burraco 2006; Mendívil Giró 2006; Mendívil Giró 2014. 2

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perspectives imposed on the same reality give way not only to different conceptions of what language is but different types of objects of study and different facts to analyse. Theories considering language in it, conceive the adequacy of a theory in terms of something external to the speaking subject thus assimilating linguistics to natural sciences. They will establish facts based on objectified concepts taken from language use. An objectified concept is, for example, language in the statement language is a common human possession1. You cannot ever verify if language in that statement is verifiable because the only thing you can verify is speech acts, and even these ones, given the variety and extent of them, must be dealt with in terms of previous concepts (language, a language, speech, the speaking subject, activity, creativity, the language use, etc.) and with previous models intuitively conceived. And with this procedure, if one starts with an intuition to prove another intuition indirectly, with no necessary connection with both, he will probably mismatch the thing to prove with the proof. A statement like that is nothing but an un-verified interpretation. If ‘language’ in the statement is abstract ‘possession’ must be abstract as well. So, you cannot verify something abstract in something else abstract if both concepts (language and possession), combined with each other, do not make an analytic statement (see Sections 1 and 2). In an analytic statement the extent in the syntactic subject (language) must have the same extent as the one in the predicate (possession). There can be many more human possessions not being language. If language exists in it, it does not necessarily have to be a human possession ―as a matter of facts, Chomsky accepts the existence of language in bees. And if language is objective (for example, a language) possession must be objective as well, and we all know that speakers usually speak only a language, at the most, several languages, not all languages because language includes all languages. On the other hand, that objective possession has not ever been found out existing in it. This conclusion is accepted

1

Chomsky 2002, 47.

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in some way or another by its author, since he says that this statement is a hypothesis of research1. Clearly enough, that statement is not analytic. 11.2.1. The Object of Study of Human Sciences

On the contrary, for theories considering language as something in the speaking subject, the object of study is the human subject inasmuch as he lives language, that is, inasmuch as he intuitively conceives, creates, performs, speaks, says, uses, evaluates and even speaks of language. In this sense since the agent of the reality to be explained is the same as the agent giving the explanation, that is, since the creative and the intelligent agent and the things continuously being created are rooted in the faculty of knowledge, language and human studies cannot be but interpretation, that is, hermeneutics, the justified explanation of human facts in terms of the human life. In language study Coseriu, following with a long tradition coming from Aristotle, Vico, Pagliaro, Hegel and Husserl, starts with what he calls the original knowledge, “that type of a knowledge a human subject has about himself and his free activities (and of course about the aim of these activities)”2. For Coseriu, the human subject, the speaking subject3, is a free4 and historic subject, who is togetherwith-others (otherness5), who participates with others in the very creation of speech6, thus making himself in history7. Linguistics, for him, is nothing but the interpretation of the verbal behaviour of speakers8. Since in human sciences the verum and the certum

1

Chomsky 1965, 30. Coseriu 1999, 36. 3 Coseriu 1999, 36. 4 Coseriu 1988, 196. 5 Coseriu 1985, 31; Coseriu 2006, 27. 6 Coseriu 1988, 70; Coseriu 1988, 194-196. 7 Coseriu 1985, 32. 8 Coseriu 1992, 100. 2

46

coincide, the foundation of theories is nothing supposed to be certain but something speakers —and linguists as far as they are speakers— previously know. In this sense, cultural sciences are better founded than natural sciences”1. The reason for this is that in the world of freedom the universal is known intuitively through an interior experience2. Consequently, in human sciences the exactitude positive-ness, what is given positively and can be verified is freedom, intention, invention, creation, and free adoption motivated only purposefully3. Because of this objective verum and subjective certum will always be liable to revision. In the end the interpretation of human sciences will always depend on the general conception of what to be a human being is. The conception of what a human being is has changed many times in history. To overcome this problem human subjects will have to start with a theory of knowledge. Human sciences, then, are interpretation, hermeneutics. 11.2.2. The Radical Reality Language Study

In human sciences the initial conception of things proper of this or that community of thought may constitute the base of the initial intuition (see Sections 8.1. to 8.3.). To avoid this, it is necessary to analyse the initial intuition looking for the radical reality it is based on. In this sense human sciences are nothing but the development of a theory of knowledge, that is, a philosophy. When he knows, a human being is based on what he considers of himself as a knowing subject. In this sense, human studies have to do with the most basic problem in humans, the problem of knowledge: what we know, how we know and why we know. Therefore, a human subject to know must know what he as the agent of knowledge is. If things in the world and even the world exist it is because the knowing subject can create, represent, and interpret that continuum surrounding him. A human subject must necessarily do something to survive with the

1

Coseriu 1986b, 70. Coseriu 1993, 29-30. 3 Coseriu 1988, 193. 2

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only means he is given when come into the world, his capability of knowing through his sense organs and his intellect. In human studies the radical reality cannot be but the human life encompassing the whole reality of humans and going beyond it. In this sense the knowing subject is transcendent, that is, the human subject as far as he can create and interpret things and the world both sensitively and mentally making an interpretation of them1 and even an interpretation of his proper reality by means of language2 goes beyond the things stated. Since language is the activity of speaking3, performed by free and intelligent subjects4, who live in a particular circumstance5, involving speaking saying and knowing6; since language is the creation of meanings and the objectification of those meanings in forms of a language7, linguistics cannot study anything unless it starts with the human life manifest in language and the human free activities, both in individual and historic forms. The radical reality for the study of language and linguistics is nothing but the intelligent, saying and speaking subject, an individual absolute and transcendent subject, on the one hand, and on the other, the intelligent saying and speaking subjects who speak and participate in a speech community (=a language=a historic reality made in history) thus having something in common (historic forms constituting a language). Both radical realities constitute the incontestable reality a linguist cannot doubt of8. 12. Human Dimensions Manifest in Language

1

Kant 2004; Ortega y Gasset 1987, 190. Humboldt 1990, 83; Coseriu 1985, 32-33. 3 Coseriu 1985, 72. 4 Coseriu 1985, 32; Coseriu 1988, 196; Ortega y Gasset 1986, 130. 5 Ortega y Gasset 1992, 46-47. 6 Martínez del Castillo 2015a; Martínez del Castillo 2015b; Martínez del Castillo 2015c; and Martínez del Castillo 2015d. 7 Coseriu 1985, 205-206; Coseriu 1985, 26-27. 8 Coseriu 1985, 26-27. 2

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For Coseriu, language has two dimensions, the dimension subject-object, objective dimension; and the dimension subjectsubject, subjective dimension1. Because of the first dimension, language has to do with the connection of the speaking subject with things in the world. That is, language has to do with the creation of things and concepts representing things and worlds full of things. But language does not create things, but delimits species, that is, language presents things as existing and being members of a class2. Because of the second dimension, language has to do with the speaking subject in connection with other speaking subjects3. Language, first, is creative and meaningful; and language, second, is aimed at others, language is for others: the speaking subject presupposes the existence of others at least with the same capacity to speak as he himself has. Both dimensions by Coseriu can be analysed in four: a) language evincing the subject, the “I”, as someone performing his freedom and intelligence, that is, language as the creation of meanings; b) language evincing the definition of the free, creative, intelligent, absolute, and transcendent subject before the world surrounding him, that is, language as logos manifest in saying; c) language evincing the activity performed by this free, creative, absolute, intelligent, and transcendent subject involving others and creating the means of expression, good for him and the others, that is, language as a language; and d) language revealing the subject involving and adapting to others: in this sense the subject creates the means of expression at the same time individual and common, creative and participated, made

1

Coseriu 1985, 32-33. Coseriu 2006, 73-74. 3 Coseriu 2006, 44; Coseriu 1985, 206. 2

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in history, and thus contingent and limited, that is, language as the tradition of speaking. These dimensions could be summarized in the following way1: 1. the subject as he performs his freedom and intelligence in speech thus creating meanings; 2. the subject as he acts in his circumstance thus defining himself before the circumstance he is in, that is, the subject as it manifests his logos; 3. the subject as he aims at others thus creating historic objects; 4. and the subject as he has something in common with the others and determines his speech in contexts and situations thus creating universes of knowing and known worlds2, that is, the subject as he belongs to a tradition of speaking. As it has repeatedly been said, the method in any science is double: it is method a priori, that is, deductive or analytic, corroborated with method a posteriori or experimental, the method of verification. Verification in the real is necessary if we want to reaffirm the synthesis made in the initial intuition. In this sense, science is a synthesis of intuition (=sensation, αἲσθησις) and intellect by means of imagination, to know the real. Sensation, that is, intuition is the starting point. The so-called intellect is the set of mental operations by the human mind looking for necessary connections, that is, necessity and universality3. And imagination is the interpretation made by means of both faculties. In some theories about language today, method a priori is rejected in principle. For example, Chomsky explicitly rejects method a priori expressing doubts about what it consists in4. He

1

Martínez del Castillo 2013, 77. See Coseriu 2006, 72-74 and Coseriu, 1982, 318. 3 See Ortega y Gasset 1992, 228. 4 Chomsky 1992, 148. 2

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speaks of it as dogmatism1; excludes it from natural sciences2; and believes it is a popular and unfounded method or rather a belief or set of beliefs3. The same can be said of cognitivists4. Cognitivists would interpret method a priori as old-fashioned5; or would speak of a priori philosophical compromises6. But as said above, all sciences are deductive, that is, a priori. In accordance with this it is illicit in human sciences to establish a hypothesis as a foundational truth. A hypothesis is nothing but a synthesis, the verification of which has not yet been made. All elements constituting a hypothesis, that is, the synthesis already made and the method to verify it, must necessarily be anticipated. A real hypothesis is to be formulated within a theory. It deals with individual facts, based on analogy, to conclude on all possible facts, the former intuited but not yet verified and thus insufficient to be formulated as a truth. The theory is something necessarily prior to and going beyond the hypothesis. The verification of a hypothesis must be sufficient, that is, we cannot give anything for granted. Facts must always be real, never elaborations or statements made on facts although these may previously be known. Adducing in defence of the “innateness hypothesis”7, for example, statements such as the rapidity in language learning, the acquisition of language in connection with age, the coincidence of grammars, the hyper-determination of language in deaf-blind children, the existence of universals, and the poverty of the stimulus8, do not constitute proofs in favour of the so-called “hypothesis”. None of these statements can be verified in themselves. They are but non-

1

Chomsky 2002, 79. Chomsky 2002, 68. 3 Chomsky 2002, 88-89. 4 Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 3; Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 7; Lakoff 1990, 6-7. 5 Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 245. 6 Gibbs, in Cuenca and Hilferty 1999, 22. 7 Chomsky 2002, 186. 8 Smith 2001, 225. 2

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verified conclusions of a non-formulated and previously accepted theory or assumption, that is, beliefs, some with no connection with the statement constituting the hypothesis1. Language learning as such is not a fact but a formulation of the problem of knowledge. Knowledge, and learning with it, is nothing objective, nothing liable to be verified objectively, but the result of a series of mental actions developing a series of personal and private intuitions, because of which a human subject learns something. The acquisition of language in connection with age is an interpretation of the evolution of human subjects performing a verbal behaviour, something having to do with the evolution of thought and the mental activity of individuals, with no guarantee that it is specific of what we call language. It is thus an interpretation not a fact. The coincidence of grammars is an elaboration of a series of statements about the historic manifestation of language, thus an interpretation of the mode of thinking of some speech communities with a common cultural history. And in this the linguist does not speak of language as something universal in humans but of languages. Languages do not have to coincide with one another necessarily. Similar things can be said of the hyper-determination of language in deaf-blind children, the existence of universals and the poverty of the stimulus. They do not constitute facts but elaborations or fabrications, that is, interpretations, the result of a series of syntheses of intuition and intellect. In intuition we interpret things in what we consider it is the reality of them. But since these elaborations are accepted as facts, that is, since they are not discussed but accepted as if they really constituted facts, they are beliefs, something accepted from the tradition without any reflection on our part.

Conclusion All sciences constitute intelligent activity executed and performed on the object they study. Human sciences start and deal with the human, that is, the absolute and transcendent. Linguistics as

1

Martínez del Castillo 2010, Section 10.6.

52

a human science is nothing but the interpretation of the verbal behaviour of the human subject in as much as he intuitively conceives, creates, acquires, performs, speaks, says, uses, evaluates, and even speaks of language. Linguistics as such is interpretation, that is, hermeneutics. It consists in speaking of language making a theory of knowledge. The guidelines in linguistics must be the dimensions of the human subject manifest in language, namely, 1) the subject as he performs his freedom and intelligence thus

creating meanings; 2) the subject as he acts in his circumstance thus defining

himself before the circumstance he is in; 3) the subject as he aims at others thus creating historic objects;

and 4) the subject as he has something in common with the others

and adapts his speech to contexts and situations thus accepting known worlds and universes of knowing, that is, the subject as he belongs to a tradition in the technique of speaking.

53

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Chapter 2: Real Language1 Abstract Human beings make themselves with language in history. Language defines human beings making them subjects of their being and mode of being. In this sense language is essential and exclusive of humans. The problem with language consists in explaining the reality of language, something internal to speakers but manifesting itself as external to them. Keywords: Language, A language, Degree of reality, Modes of thinking, Modes of being of things 1. Language and the Speaking Subject

The first problem arising when you study language, or any aspect of language is the problem of the nature of the object you study, that is, the nature of language. The first verification one can make is that language is something existing in speakers and executed by speakers. In this sense language is internal to the human being who speaks. Moreover, language insofar as it is represented in most western languages with the word ‘language’ or similar ones (Fr. langage, Sp. lenguaje, P. linguagem, It. linguagio, Sp. lengua, Fr. langue, etc.) appears as something existing in it, something out there, imposing itself on speakers. On the other hand, speakers speak for others, that is, speech is directed to someone else who understands. In this sense language is external to the speaking subject. The problem with language then is that language is both internal and external to human beings. In order to know what language is it is necessary to analyse the function language performs both in the speaking subject and the listener, and in the group of speakers who can speak and understand language in its narrower and broader sense. 2. Language as Something Internal to the Speaking Subject

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Published in Education and Linguistics Research, 2 (1) (2016), 40-53, ISNN 2377-1356. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/elr.v2i1.8832

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2.1. A Means to Overcome the Circumstance Human

Subjects Are In Since language is internal to human subjects, language is created in the conscience of speakers. A human subject is to be defined as the speaking subject1. Human subjects create language in their conscience because of this language defines human beings. Language thus is something exclusive and essential of humans. This fact reveals the nature of speaking subjects: they create language because they are free to imagine and create. Language in as much as it is created exists as a voluntary act of its creators. The faculty of imagining and creating is exclusive of the human subject who is in a circumstance having to do something to overcome it and survive. Language is nothing given to humans. It is something they must create since it constitutes the only means for them to survive in the world. 2.2 Language Is for Others

Since language is internal to speaking subjects for language to be given there must be two speakers at least. Language is aimed at someone else. Human subjects create speech for others. In this sense language is not merely language: language is both language and a language. This fact reveals the double condition of being of humans. Human subjects create language speaking to others. That is, human subjects make themselves freely in collaboration and participation with others. Speaking subjects are together-with-others (otherness)2. To survive, human subjects need the mutual help of others. This help is established through language and by means of language. In this sense speakers are co-speakers recognizing themselves in others. Because of this human subjects and language are social. 2.3 Language Made in History

Since human subjects make themselves in participation with others they are historic, that is, they make themselves in history just

1 2

Ortega y Gasset, 1992b, 1992b. Coseriu 1985.

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from their birth. Because of this language is historic as well, the manifestation of the historicity of its speakers. Language manifests itself as a series of historic objects, languages, made in participation of all speakers thus forming systems of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, beliefs, and attitudes put in common and constituting different speech communities (common> community). 2.4 Language Is Purposeful

Since human subjects must do something in the circumstance they are in language aims at achieving something pragmatic at the speaker´s interest. Because of this the state of pragmatic affairs denoted in the linguistic expression is different from the reality denoted. Language thus is meaningful and symbolic. The words put in common in a speech community represent social conventions1 but beyond these social conventions words and expressions aim at something not conventional but something determined intentionally contextually and particularly. Language thus has meaning, designation and sense2. Language reveals the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker3. 2.5 The Internal Arrangement of Things

Since speakers are creative because they are free and thus absolute aiming at achieving something different from the words used they are transcendent. They do not describe things but create and represent the things created arranging and re-arranging them in their conscience. This means that speakers define themselves in the circumstance they are in, that is, they say about the things constituting the circumstance they are in (see chapter 3). In this sense the execution of language, speaking, is not speaking but speaking and understanding. This fact as well reveals the character of the speaking subject. The speaking subject is intelligent because he can re-arrange things to get the maximum profit of the situation surrounding him.

1

Ortega y Gasset 2001. Coseriu 1992. 3 Martínez del Castillo 2004; Martínez del Castillo 2015b. 2

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2.6 Internal Definition of the Speaking Subject

Since human subjects are free, creative, absolute, transcendent, together-with-others, social and historic, human subjects have a peculiar way of knowing. Speaking is not only speaking a language. It is speaking, saying and knowing. Human subjects speak because they have something to say, they say because they define themselves in the circumstance they are in at any moment and they define themselves because they are able to know1. 2.7 The Human Way of Knowing

Since language is speaking, saying and knowing, the deepest genesis of language is the peculiar way of knowing of humans. The human way of knowing consists in the symbolic mental representation of different acts of perception thus making them into things. As a mental representation the act of knowing consists of two basic mental operations: first, it consists of the percept come to us through our sense organs or through imagination and creation. It is intuition (intuito, Descartes) designated as αἲσθησις (=sensation) aísthesis, by Aristotle2. Aísthesis represents the starting point in human knowledge. Although it is sensitive it represents a mental understanding of itself, the connection of simple ideas representing something sensitive constituting with it a new reality3. And second, it consists of the symbolic mental representation once the nature of aísthesis is changed in its way of being that from sensitive and concrete is made into abstract. The symbolic mental representation made in the conscience of the individual speaker is always executed in something material to be offered to others: words in the case of language and the means used in the different arts (a surface in painting, a piece of marble in sculpture, sounds in music, etc.). The human act of knowing represents the synthesis of sensibility and

1

See Martínez del Castillo, 2004 (second edition 2017c), 2015b See Ortega y Gasset 1992. 3 Ortega y Gasset 1992. 2

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intellect by means of imagination1, that is, the synthesis of the percept and something created on the part of the knowing subject. Since the words used in the act of knowing are common, that is, social conventions not belonging to the subject but the speech community, one thing is the percept perceived, that is, lived, something different is the meaning of words, and something different is the things said. This is the problem of logos or the problem of the relationships between language and thought. Logos is the state lived by the speaking subject in his conscience. As a state lived in the conscience of the speaking subject logos prompts the act of knowing and thus the mental representation of aísthesis come to us through the sense organs. Logos thus is sensitive and concrete. Since the human subject is intelligent logos is intuitively understood but not made explicit. The problem comes when human subjects try to express their logos in words representing social conventions. 2.8 The Birth of Language

Since speaking subjects create language aiming at achieving something, and since language is for others having to represent their creations mentally in words, human subjects are limited and contingent. This means that language is limited, contingent and depends on the sounds of words, that is, language is form. Because of this language is born when speaking, when it is spoken. Language thus is nothing given to speakers, nothing existing before speakers. Language is the activity of speaking made by speakers involving knowledge, the competence (Sp. saber) to speak. 2.9 Language and Form

The fact that language is form can be justified as well in the fact that for a human conscience to get into contact with another one is only possible through material means. Language thus is constituted with different systems of forms bearing contents, forming units,

1

Kant 2004.

59

governed with historic rules and procedures revealing attitudes, beliefs and ideas in force in a speech community. 2.10 The Speech Act as the Internal Activity of Speaking

As a matter of facts, the speech act represents the internal activity performed by speakers. As internal activity the speech act can be decomposed in a set of internal mental or intellective operations having to do with the act of conceiving and tackling with the chunk of reality apprehended and made known, the act of knowing. The speaking subject approximates reality, tries to capture it apprehending it with his sense organs (aísthesis), selects something out of the original concrete and sensual apprehension of the real, delimits the object apprehended thus transforming it into an abstract mental construct, creates a class or an essence, gives the construct a name, relates it to other concepts either existing in the conscience of the speaker or in the language, determines it thus orientating the construct created into real things, and expresses it in words of a language. In this process of apprehension of the real, in the speech act conceived as an act of knowing the speaking subject makes the following mental operations: first, the sensual concrete and material apprehension of things, intuition, aísthesis; second, selecting from aísthesis of something out of the initial apprehension of things; third, delimiting semantic objects out of the thing apprehended and selected; fourth, creating a class or essence (a category) to attribute it to the construct created so far; fifth, relating the construct created to other concepts created either in the background of the speaker or in the tradition of speaking; sixth, giving the construct created a name; seventh, determining or orientating the construct created so far to the real; and finally expressing it in words of a language. In this process the construct apprehended was changed in its way of being in different forms: the sensual and concrete was made into abstract; the abstract was made into virtual1 with the addition of the ideas of 1

In a theory of knowledge, something is virtual when the extent of a meaning involves all possible, probable, existing, non-existing or imaginary items.

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necessity and universality; the virtual was made objective; then the construct created was orientated to real things thus making it real; and finally, with the use of words to express it the construct was made linguistic. The speech act is nothing but the execution of an act of knowing thus revealing the existence of language as something internal to the speaking subjects1. Consequently, the speech act conceived in this way is nothing, but the internal activity made by the speaking subject thus making possible the existence of what we call language and things such as they are conceived and considered to exist. Language thus is activity, the activity of speaking2, performed internally in accordance with the peculiar way of knowing of humans. Human knowledge encompasses both the sensitive given in intuition and the mental thus forming the symbolic representation in the synthesis of both3. 2.11 Language as the Result of the Human Act of Knowing

The object to be studied now, language, is thus the product of sensibility (experience) and intellect (reason) by means of imagination with the determination of historicity. In this sense language as an object of knowing is not anything different from any other objects known. The human knowing subject who studies language as an object separates himself from the reality known. The reality of language is something lived in the conscience of the subject studying it different from the image or mental representation he as a speaker must create in his conscience to study it. Moreover, the reality of language manifests itself externally (cf. § 3 below). The external manifestation of language constitutes the data the linguist, both a linguist and a speaker, must analyse to verify his theory and interpret language. 2.12 The Mental Problem Created in the Act of Knowing

1

Martínez del Castillo 2004; Martínez del Castillo 2015b; Martínez del Castillo 2015c, and Martínez del Castillo 2015d. 2 Coseriu 1992. 3 See Ortega y Gasset 1992a; Ortega y Gasset 1992b.

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Language is the way it is because human subjects created it in their conscience thus revealing the human way of being, behaving and knowing. Correspondingly the words used to refer to the reality of language such as language, a language, speech, speech acts and the many of them referring to aspects of the reality of language used in the study of it (linguistic competence, sentence, word, meaning, sense, text, thought, logos, etc.) do not refer to autonomous realities. They do not exist as concrete realities. Because of this they cannot be taken as the starting point to study the problem of language. They are nothing but some aspects of a higher reality, the reality of humans who speak because they have something to say, who say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in, who define themselves because they know thus constituting the only means they have to survive in the circumstance they are in. Language thus cannot be understood unless in connection with humans and the human life. Language does not constitute an autonomous unique reality, but it refers to some aspects of the reality of speaking subjects. 3. Language as Something External to Speakers

Since language is form language manifests itself as something external to the speaking subject. Language as a language thus constitutes a system to speak coming from the outside of the speaking subject, from others. Since all speakers participate in speaking a language is constituted as a technique of speaking put in common. Because of this (the commonness of language) a language constitutes the base of society in what it is called a speech community. The base of society is to be found in the peculiar way of being of humans. Human beings are, as has already been said, together-with-others, that is, they participate and collaborate with others in the same level of historicity thus recognizing themselves in others, recognizing in the You another I1. Although the reality of language is primarily internal a language manifests itself in others because it is participated with others and made together with others.

1

Coseriu 2006, 44.

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3.1 Historicity and the Process of Language Learning

Human speaking subjects are born in a speech community in a moment of history. Because of this when they are born they will learn intuitively the language in force in particular historic conditions. The language in force in a speech community constitutes a system of designation offered to speakers1. Speakers will accept the great majority of historic forms in the speech community they are born in, and will create, and thus offer new ones to others. The newly born speaking subject, that is, the baby, will try to reproduce the sounds it hears and will interpret them in terms of form, meaning, function, and designation. The forms and meanings created by it once it has grown and becomes a child will coincide with the ones in force in his speech community or not. If the new form created is accepted the child will reaffirm in his creation but if it verifies that the form is not accepted it will reject it. This process of language learning will last all along the speaker’s life. It is the process of creation and resignation: creation of new individual forms and resignation of forms created tentatively if not accepted2. The process of language learning is based on the peculiar way of being of humans. Human subjects participate with others because they recognize themselves in others (otherness). Language is born when the words created by the individual speaker reverberate in the listener, that is, when the subjective representation of the sound given back to the ear of the speaker and listener is translated into something objectively real without being deprived of its original subjectivity3. The condition of this process of participation, collaboration and mutual recognition is historicity. 3.2 Language as it Manifests Itself in Diálogos

1

Coseriu 1985. Coseriu 1992. 3 Humboldt 1990. 2

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The degree of reality1 of language cannot be verified in it but in its manifestations. Language as internal to the speaking subject constitutes something previously known because of intuition in an internal experience. Speakers can verify their knowledge to speak (idiomatic knowledge2) in the verbal behaviour of their co-speakers. In dialogue (διά-λογος=because of logos, by means of logos) language manifests as it is. Language is speaking and understanding for both the speaker and the listener, relieving each other in the respective roles of speaker and listener3. 3.2.1. Language and Logos

Language manifests itself as the state lived by the speaker in his conscience. In this sense language is logos, the creation of meanings and the objectification of contents of conscience. But logos, when it manifests itself, needs the words of a language. Since words are social conventions logos appears only as the meanings of a language: logos as the reality lived by speakers in their conscience constitutes something different from meanings. The problem with logos consists in guessing what it is. This problem is always present in dialogue. Speakers do not pay attention to the words used but to the speaker’s meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker manifesting in the words and expressions used. Coseriu separates two types of logos: semantic logos and apophantic logos. Semantic logos as a state lived by the speaking subject is universal since it constitutes the meaningful function of language. It is historic since it belongs to a historic language (=any language) performed in historic forms. And it is individual since the meaningful function is expressed in forms of a language using contexts and situations. Logos when it appears with a poetic, pragmatic or fantastic determination is apophantic logos. Apophantic logos is universal

1

See Ortega y Gasset 2005. Coseriu 1992. 3 Ortega y Gasset 1987. 2

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since it is knowledge (example: it is minus twelve degrees outside); differs from logic (example: he lived to be three scores and five); and since linguistic classifications of the real (=linguistic categories) differ from scientific classifications (example: it is 15:00, 18:00, 7:00 different from it is afternoon, it is evening, it is dawn). In this sense apophantic logos goes beyond languages. It is historic since the real and its knowledge impose on linguistic intuition and meanings (example: a sea of troubles). And it is individual since it appears in different and peculiar types of texts (a sonnet, a song, a ballad, a law, greetings, etc.)1. 3.2.2 Language as a Language

Language manifests itself as a historic language, that is, a historic object made in history in force and supported on a speech community. As a historic object a language manifests itself as independent and different from others. Example, English is radically different from Hopi, and even, from the language in Beowulf. Language thus involves and goes beyond all languages. In this sense, the study of language is not the summary of all languages (the socalled general linguistics) but the reality underlying them all and supporting them all. 3.2.3 Language as Speech

But languages cannot be verified in themselves but in speech. To verify a language, it is necessary to know about that language somehow. In accordance with the peculiar way of knowing of humans, for a human free subject to know, consists in adding something mental previously known or created on intuition to the thing perceived at the very act of knowing. As with language and a language speech is known because of an interior experience, that is, it is known on intuition. Because of this idiomatic knowledge is prior to the performance of speech, because language is ἐνέργεια2, free activity.

1 2

Martínez del Castillo 2009. Humbodlt, Coseriu

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Speech can be verified in innumerable speech acts. From the point of view of the creation of concepts, the statement “speech can be verified in innumerable speech acts” involves an apparent contradiction. It represents a typical synthetic a priori statement: an assumption taken from the real (experience) and given universality and necessity (Kant, Descartes, Ortega y Gasset). For a synthetic a priori statement to be given it is necessary to verify the existence of a few items of the thing studied in experience. Then the mental image of those few items is taken as representative of the whole class of items thus making it be considered the essence of what is going to be studied. But since a speech act is known intuitively because the knowledge of it (idiomatic knowledge, competence) language is prior to its performance. This fact reveals the difficulty involved in the study of language and the human problems they all involved with freedom and free activities. When you study language as a free activity executed by speakers you will know what it is all about prior to the study of it. On the other hand, speech acts, which are innumerable having been given in the past, being given in the present, and constituting the mental image for future performances, revert to the activity of speaking, something made by speakers, the product of a free intelligent agent (the human speaking subject) thus giving an object made (speech acts, speech) and revealing the reality of language and a language. 3.3 Problems Posed in Language Study and the Human

Sciences The fact of the existence of language, on the one hand, and the different and disparaging languages, on the other, poses the problem of which one is first. This problem, which is the same as the one distinguishing language as internal and external to the speaking subject, can be solved in two ways: a) the concept of language may be achieved with abstracting from the different languages in the world, that is, from experience, through induction. In this sense languages are first, and language would be the generalization of the peculiarities of languages once they were studied and analysed. This 66

is the assumption of the so-called general linguistics, sometimes called typology. Or the contrary, b) the concept of language may be the result of an original intuitive idea by speakers. In this sense language as the creation of meanings and logos is first. This position is to be justified in the fact that language is internal to the speaking subject thus constituting internal knowledge prior to the act of speaking and thus knowing. The problem in this second position consists in explaining and interpreting the previous knowledge speakers have about human problems (problems determined with freedom) in terms of the reality of humans with the constant verification of them in the verbal behaviour of speakers. Human subjects create things in the very act of knowing, that is, in the speech act. Dealing with human matters —and linguistics in particular— the so-called original (intuitive) knowledge determines theories. Original knowledge is that type of knowledge a man has about him himself and his free activities (and of course, about the aims and purposes of these ones)1. Aristotle solved this problem with the introduction of purposeful causes in the study of things, causes determining free acts. J. B. Vico introduced the distinction between certum and verum in science. In human sciences, for Vico, certum and verum coincide2. In human sciences theories are present before, during and after empirical verification. Before empirical verification, in as much as theories represent a preliminary delimitation of the original knowledge and the motivation of empirical verification; during empirical verification, as the foundation and settings of that empirical verification; and after empirical verification, as theories are made clearer, corrected, and enriched with empirical verification. In accordance with this linguistics consists in the transformation of that original knowledge, cognitio clara confusa into cognitio clara distincta et adaequata (Leibniz) or the transformation of that type of knowledge only known (bekannt) into recognized (erkannt) (Hegel, see Coseriu 1999).

1 2

Husserl, see Coseriu 1986b. Coseriu 1986b, 70.

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Induction, that is, the study of things based on the individual cannot give us an idea of such a complex and multiform reality as the one in languages because in induction the thing to be studied is the individual one. The essence of things is a mental creation and because of this it must be universal. The mental creation created on a historic language or a set of historic languages will always be individual. In the case of language, something internal to speakers, the essence of language is known not because of induction or synthetic a priori statements but through intuition because of an internal experience (original intuitive knowledge). Considering that language is something internal to the speaking subject and that language cannot be verified in it unless in its performance language is first. Languages thus constitute necessary conditions for language to exist. Languages then constitute universals of language because they are necessary for the existence, performance, and manifestation of language. 3.4 The Activity of Speaking and Idiomatic Knowledge

The set of innumerable speech acts constitutes the activity of speaking. The activity of speaking in its deepest genesis is internal to speakers but manifests itself externally. The activity of speaking constitutes the data necessary for the study and verification of the reality of language. The activity of speaking manifests itself as knowledge, the competence to speak, idiomatic knowledge or Sp. saber. Idiomatic knowledge is formed on a double basis: on the base of individual creations and the solidarity of speaking subjects with their co-speakers. In this sense and through abstraction we can speak of different realities in the activity of speaking they all referring to the manifestation of language. If we consider the activity of speaking on the base of individual creations the activity of speaking involves two factors, the agent of the activity, the human subject, and the thing done. Due to the peculiarities of the human condition of being together-with-others and the fact that language is at least for two the thing done relates to a language and a language is necessarily supported by a speech community. Languages in this sense do not appear or disappear they change and develop because they are 68

spoken. Because of this the concepts of a language and a speech community relate to the same reality, the first one stressing the thing made in it, and the second one as the necessary condition for a language to exist. In the study of language two axes must be established, the axis of creation and the axis of solidarity. Creation has to do with innovation, variety, and evolution. Solidarity has to do with the actual performance, fixation, permanence, and homogeneity. Since speakers are free and absolute they create, and since speakers are together-with-others they keep a double relationship of solidarity with their co-speakers: solidarity with those who speak the same language when speaking, horizontal solidarity; and solidarity with those who spoke the language before them, vertical solidarity. The first type of solidarity is synchrony having to do with the state of the language. The second one has to do with diachrony, the study of the evolution of language in history. 3.5 The State of the Language

A state of the language is the language really spoken in a speech community, a set of systems of isoglosses (=common speech acts) extending over a shorter or longer time. The state of the language involves a configuration of the activity of speaking. As a matter of facts, a state of the language is nothing but a traditional technique in the activity of speaking functioning in a speech community. A technique of speaking is a set of knowledge, forms, contents, units, rules, and procedures in virtue of which the activity of speaking is performed. In synchrony all linguistic forms are analogous, not homogeneous. A language has constituted itself historically in a speech community as an ideal unit to be identified by its speakers. A language occurs historically and can be studied, not described, in its historic evolution. From the point of view of diachrony a language is a series of techniques in the activity of speaking1 succeeding one another in history. The unity of the object we call a language, say 1

Coseriu 1986b.

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English, is the set of common linguistic acts, that is, forms, contents units, rules, and procedures constituting a set of isoglosses. Speakers of a language can identify this fact. They can understand the language of previous states of the language within certain limits. For example, English speakers can understand the language of Shakespeare because Modern English is constituted on the same tradition as the language of Shakespeare but they cannot understand the language in Beowulf or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The description of a language is to be made in terms of horizontal solidarity of its elements with one another. The evolution of a language is to be constituted in terms of the vertical solidarity of its elements. 4. Language as Something Autonomous

Since language necessarily manifests itself as a historic object it appears as something objective and autonomous. This fact reveals the way of knowing of humans who objectify things to be known. Every historic object (a language) reveals a cosmic vision of the world. A cosmic vision of a language or set of languages constituting groups is structured in two basic radical components: the mode of thinking of its speakers and the mode of being of things. Both components constitute the same factor in the problem of knowledge since the mode of being of things is nothing but the mode of thinking as it is performed in things. The mode of thinking is notional, the mode of being executive1. In the Western World the prevailing mode of thinking is the socalled substantive being born around the Eastern Mediterranean in the sixth and previous centuries before Christ. For Parmenides of Elea, being, what it is, what is behind what it is, is alien to generation and corruption. Being is, according to Parmenides is “one, timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging”. Together with this he added, being is and it is impossible for it not to be and non-being is not (Ferrater Mora). In accordance with the analysis of Ortega y Gasset,

1

Martínez del Castillo 2013; Martínez del Castillo 2015j.

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Parmenides extracted being from non-being (=nought). For Ortega y Gasset, this conception meant the attribution of reason to the real. Because of this thought became logos, that is, something going beyond words1. This conception of being created innumerable metaphysical problems, one of them the problem of movement. In the fourth century before Christ Aristotle formulated the concept of being as ἐνέργεια ὄν. Being is a substance, something existing in it. With this he distinguished three aspects in being: being is being in act, ἐνέργεια κατ᾽ ἔργον, not needing anything else to exist; being is the performance of itself, ἐνέργεια κατ᾽ ἐνἐργειαν; and being is the mental image of itself, ἐνέργεια κατα δὑναµιν. For example, a block of marble is a piece of rock, but it may become a statue of Jove thus constituting the image of Jove and Jove itself. With the introduction of the concept of substance to the concept of being by Aristotle, ἐνέργεια ὄν, things can be analysed individually, generally, and universally. For example, I saw a squirrel (=individual description); I saw a male squirrel (=some squirrels are male, general description); a squirrel is a small furry wild animal with a long bushy tail (=squirrels constitute a class of animals), respectively. The so-called substantive being conceives things objectively as if they were things in them. It is the peculiar and underlying mode of thinking in force in western languages, the Western World, and the Western Civilization, contrary to other civilizations all around the world conceiving things differently. As a matter of facts, Greek thinkers took this concept of being from their tradition of speaking, and their cultural influence made other people adopt this way of thinking. The concept of substantive being was modified in the 17th century with the introduction of intuition in thinking by Descartes thus giving way to the modern mode of being or being as intuition. This fact prompted the birth of idealism in philosophy and the

1

Ortega y Gasset OC IX, 1063.

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creation of positive science (the new science) by Galileo and Vico. Today since 20th century new modes of being were introduced, namely, being as it manifests itself, executive being, and real being, modes of being co-existing with substantive being and being as intuition. These modes of being can be seen in language in the following way: a) speakers intuitively conceive and create language (the mode of thinking of being as intuition); b) speakers acquire and perform language (executive mode of thinking); c) for speakers, language is διἀλογος: activity and mode of speaking, that is, speakers speak, say, and know in accordance with historic traditions thus involving others (mode of thinking of being as manifesting itself); d) speakers use language thus making themselves human (mode of thinking of being as real). e) speakers evaluate and speak of language as a series of entities: language, the English language, meanings, words, speech, speech act, speech sounds, the correct use of expressions and words, etc. (substantive mode of thinking). And this is the basis for us to say that speakers live language, that is, speakers intuitively conceive, create, acquire, perform, speak and say, use, evaluate, and even speak of language. This fact can be analysed in linguists when they study language. Since linguists are necessarily speakers of a language they must use language, the same as ordinary speakers, to make a description of language, that is, to determine the degree of reality of the problem of language. For speakers, language 1) involves intuition to know the piece of reality they want to speak of. For linguists, language study involves the creation of a theory. That is, the linguist will make series of analytic statements (modern mode of thinking); 2) speakers learn language from their co-speakers. For linguists, to study language means describing the verbal 72

behaviour of speakers either individually or in participation with others in a speech community (executive mode of thinking); 3) speakers manifest their intelligence and freedom, their mode of thinking, and their mode of conceiving things in speech. For linguists, language must be described in accordance with the way of being of speakers (mode of thinking of being as manifesting itself); 4) since speakers use the circumstance they are in thus creating contexts to define themselves and speak, linguists must study the degree of reality of language and all aspects in it in terms of the radical reality they are based on, that is, the human subject (being as real); 5) and for both speakers and linguists, the description of language and its manifestations cannot be made unless language manifestations are objectified, that is, conceived as entities (substantive being). 5. Language and Speakers

Language exists in speakers, because of speakers, and for speakers. Language is both internal and external to the speaking subject, something intuited since it constitutes knowledge created in the conscience of the individual speaker, performed in accordance with thought just because it is logos; aimed at achieving something different, put in common in a speech community thus making and remaking itself in history; something material used as a means of expression, directed to someone else, participated by all speakers who recognize themselves in others thus constituting the essence of human subjects and the only means they have to survive in this world.

Conclusion Language is real as far as it relates to human subjects who are free and contingent, absolute, limited, transcendent and historic thus making themselves in participation with others and recognizing themselves in others. Human subjects speak, say, and know. Since language depends on human subjects, linguistics is nothing but the study of real language manifest in the verbal behaviour of speakers. 73

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Chapter 3: Linguistics of Saying1 Jesús Martínez del Castillo, PhD Almería University, Spain Abstract: Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects, speak because they have something to say; they say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in; and this is possible because they can know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying, and knowing. In this sense there is a progressive determination. Knowing makes possible saying and saying determines speaking. The problem thus is to determine the linguistic intention of the individual speaker in every speech act. Key Words: Speaking, Saying, and Knowing; Intellective Operations; the Intentional Meaningful Purpose of the Individual Speaker.

1. Linguistics of saying.

Linguistics of saying is a proposal made by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and formulated by me in 20041. It starts with language considered in its birth. Language is born whenever it is spoken. From this point of view language does not have concrete existence: it is mental activity, the creation of meanings; a historic language2 is something virtual, that is, idiomatic knowledge (=competence, Sp. saber), the knowledge of speakers to speak thus consisting in a technical knowledge. The only thing with

1

2

The theory of saying, first published in Spanish in 2004 in, Hablar, decir y conocer. El logos semántico y el logos apofántico, Granada Lingvistica. This chapter is a summary of linguistics of saying, published as an article in European Scientific Journal, December 2013 /SPECIAL/ edition vol. 2, ISSN: 1857 -7881 (Print), e – ISSN 1857-7431, pp. 441-451. This expression relates to a language, something made in history, that is, a historic object.

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concrete existence is speaking subjects, that is, human beings as they execute the activity of speaking. Language is not merely the use of words to create utterances but the activity consisting in speaking, saying, and knowing about things and the world constituted of things thus understanding things and the world. Human subjects speak because they have something to say. They say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are involved in, thus creating things and a world constituted of things. Speakers define themselves because they can know, that is, they can apprehend things and create something about them thus adding something new to their apprehension. Language, thus, consists of this treble reality: speaking, saying, and knowing. In its deepest genesis knowing is first, then, saying, and finally, speaking. In other words: knowing is the possibility of saying; saying is the determination of speaking and speaking is the manifestation of both knowing and saying. In linguistics of saying the production of speech is to be examined when it is created. Language manifests itself in speech acts produced by human subjects. Language cannot be verified in it. The only thing you can verify is speech acts, innumerable speech acts. Language is born daily in every speech act. Speech acts are entirely new, since they are made of both utterances and the topics utterances deal with, that is, they consist in creation of both words and expressions and the contents, or logos, or thought expressed in those words and expressions. Linguistics of saying analyses language starting with the contents in expressions. In this sense linguistics of saying is interpretation, that is, hermeneutics, defined as “the crossroads and mutual connection of different disciplines, linked together purposefully by a man’s self-reflection”1. This perspective involves interpreting the speech act as the result of an act of knowing thus stressing the intellective operations in accordance with the speech act has been constituted. This means

1

Di Cesare 1999, 3-5.

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determining and interpreting the speech act as the result of the meaningful intentional purpose of the speaker. In linguistics of saying the problem is to determine the meaningful expressive intention of the individual speaker in the creation of speech acts. 2. Functions in linguistics of saying.

In linguistics of saying you can see two functions given in all linguistic expressions but given differently in every speech act and every language. These functions are the object of saying and the object of knowing. In a speech act the creation of these two functions is executed by means of the different intellective operations we are going to see below (cf. § 3).

2.1. The object of saying. The object of saying is the aspect, underlined or not grammatically, because of which the expression is formulated. It constitutes the ultimate purpose of the utterance. For example, when you say an expression such as, My father has a Roll Royce you can ask: what is the meaningful intentional purpose of the speaker who formulated this expression? Who or what is the author of this expression speaking of? Is he speaking of his father? Why is this expression said? The author of this utterance, given for granted it is real, is speaking of himself. The significance of this expression is remarking how proud or happy the speaker feels since his father has a Roll Royce, and probably his mates’ fathers do not have a Roll Royce. The information in the sentence is given by the phrases “my father” and “a Roll Royce” put together with the verbal contents of “have”. But the most unimportant grammatical element, the possessive determiner “my”, is used by the speaker in question to orientate the whole sentence towards himself. “My” represents the message of the expression, the meaningful intentional purpose, that is, the “saying” of the expression, the object constituting the reason the expression is said. The object of saying thus is the best representative of the original meaningful intention to say by the individual speaker. It is 77

the determining element in terms of which the whole expression is organized.

2.2. The object of knowing. The object of knowing, on the contrary, is the means of expression used to create the saying of the expression, that is, the information given to execute the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. The means of expression for a free human subject can be very varied, some of which may be linguistic and some non-linguistic accompanying or substituting the linguistic expression. In the example above, the object of knowing is “a Roll Royce”. The speaker tries to draw his listeners’ attention on a highquality car belonging to him since it is his father’s. Consequently, the meaningful intentional purpose of the speaker in an expression (the object of saying) is something to be confronted to the information given (the object of knowing). The meaningful intentional purpose of the speaker will always determine the information given. Because of this language, from the point of view of the individual speaker, is nothing but the intention to say. Analysed in the act of knowing, the object of saying constitutes the base the speech act is founded on. It involves re-structuring the things constituting the circumstance the speaking subject is in. Thanks to this re-structuring (or this creation of meanings) the speaking subject has something to say. The thing determined in the linguistic expression (the object of knowing) can be said in many ways thus depending on the perspective imposed by the individual speaker (his intentional meaningful purpose), the object of saying. These two functions are to be found in all speech acts. Since speaking is speaking and understanding, a set of intellective operations form the speech act, they all manifesting themselves in it. A language as a background where acts of knowing are created and executed manifests these intellective operations. 3. Intellective operations in the speech act.

Intellective operations are aimed at expressing the meaningful intentional purpose of speakers. For a speaking subject the problem 78

is to say. The meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker constitutes the determination of the speech act. Linguistic expressions manifest the procedure used in the conception and expression of something. To say you must create the following things: 1. an object to say of; 2. what you want to say of the object created; 3. a class of objects to define the object created; 4. relate the object and class created to something previously known; 5. find out a name to the object and class created; 6. apply the object and class created to things in the real world; 7. and finally offer your creation to others. All these functions are executed in the speech act, the act of creating language by a free subject aiming at a meaningful purpose, based on the act of knowing and using the means of expression of a language.

3.1. An initial intuition or aísthesis. Human subjects, to survive in the circumstance they are in must do something. The circumstance the subject is in may be hostile or friendly. The first thing they must do is to know about the things surrounding them. The speech act as the performance of the act of knowing is an entirely free act. It consists in transforming what comes to you through your sense organs, something concrete, into something abstract, something liable to be manipulated. What comes to you through your sense organs cannot be but lived, not manipulated. However, human subjects imagine something representing what comes to them through the sense organs to transform and manipulate it, if only mentally. The thing transformed into, or created, or fabricated can be used as a model to modify the world surrounding the intelligent subject. It will be used not only in the situation the subject is in but in many other possible situations. 79

The act of knowing starts with an initial intuition on the part of the subject. This initial intuition is of concrete character: it is sensation, called by Aristotle αἲσθησις, aísthesis1, something you cannot describe but merely feel or live. Intuition is something you can or cannot have, at the most something you can prompt. It constitutes the condition sine qua non of the act of knowing. This kind of intuition or sensation is something had even by animals. If for a sensitive being sensation cannot be manipulated, for the free, creative, intelligent, saying and speaking subject it can be transformed and made into something representing it. Because of this, you can see the following intellective operations manifesting in the speech act and in some way or another in languages.

3.2. Selecting from aíthesis. The first intellective operation in a speech act is selecting something from the initial intuition (sensation or αἲσθησις) had by the intelligent subject. Out of the many potential relationships of signification or perspectives liable to be imposed on the initial intuition —intelligent subjects are creative just because they are free when conceiving— one is selected or the whole intuition is considered under a perspective or point of view. Since the original intuition is sensation, the intelligent subject is in the need of explaining it, first, to himself thus creating thought and his conscience, and then to others thus creating language. This explanation either internal (to himself) or external (to others) starts with selecting something out of the original sensation or imposing a perspective on the thing felt. In this sense selecting from aísthesis means transforming what originally was sensitive into something non-sensitive but abstract. But to do this the intelligent, saying and speaking subject must explain what he feels with words not created by him but the community. Consequently, the speaking subject contemplates four different realities:

1

See Ortega y Gasset 1999a, 128-130.

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a) what he feels (his intuition, aíthesis), b) the image he has created to represent what he feels, c) him himself as different from his sensation and the thing he has selected or fabricated. This fact is the base for the creation of human thought and conscience, and d) the words and expressions of a language. Selecting from aísthesis is made through abstraction. The intelligent subject “extracts” something from his original sensation thus creating something new. Selecting from aísthesis manifests itself differently in particular languages. For example, paraphrasing may be a manifestation of selecting different extracts from aísthesis. The contents in, say, he is married to a young wife, he married a young wife and he has a young wife refer to the same fact of experience. “He” and “wife”, in the examples keep some relationships of signification thus representing different extracts from the same intuition. The same can be said of I cannot drive a car as against I am no driver: it is different perspective imposed on the same fact of experience thus interpreting it in different ways. The same can be said when you count with cardinal or ordinal numbers. Counting with cardinal numbers means reducing the things counted to the concept of unit. You do not count, say, women or men, but units of the class specified: ten women and ten men. Counting with ordinal numbers means establishing an order on the things counted: the first thing I did was to greet my friends, the second, to announce my intention.

3.3. Delimiting semantic objects or establishing a designation. The second intellective operation in a speech act is prompted with the need of constituting an object to say of it. The object to be

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created can be something with designation1 in the world, for example a mountain; or something in an imaginary world, the golden window of the east; or something with no designation whatsoever in the physical world, happiness, goodness, justice, truth. The mental operation of delimiting an object to say of it is always present in human knowledge. Delimiting semantic objects may not be a problem when both the semantic object created, and the reality designate exist in the tradition, or there is a basis in the physical world for it to exist. It is the case of tree, flower, river: they appear as having concrete existence since there are objects in the world denoted with the name of some semantic classes. The semantic objects on the one hand, and the semantic classes on the other appear to the speaking subject as if they constituted the same reality. But it may appear problematic when the semantic object and thus the semantic classes created appear only as contents of conscience without any possibility of designating anything in the world. It is the case of, for example, beauty, faithfulness, profit. In these cases, both the semantic objects and the semantic classes created appear to be the same. If you say, for example, an area of outstanding natural beauty you have two different realities, the semantic class denoted (outstanding natural beauty) and the semantic object created (an area) to be applied the semantic class created. The semantic class created is something completely different from the semantic object created. They both answer to the need of delimiting a semantic object to say of and the need of creating what to say of it (the class, concept, or category). Both the thing denoted, that is, the semantic object, and the semantic class created belong to the world of imagination. They were

1

I´d use the noun designation, the verb designate and the adjective designate rather than reference and refer to mean the connection between the contents of an expression or word and the thing represented in the world.

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created by the intelligent subject in the very act of conceiving and expressing a new state of pragmatic affairs1. They both are based on the intuition on the things perceived or apprehended. Delimiting semantic objects can be illustrated with the following example. If you say this is true you refer something delimited by the word this and the context thus creating a semantic object. However, this as an element of the English language (a determiner) can refer anything. This can represent very different things of very different nature. This can be constituted with a unit, a part of a unit, or a set of units. The important thing is that you consider this as representing the thing you want to say of. This fact has the following implications: 1. if the things denoted with the determiner are many you will reduce them to only one; 2. if the things denoted have reality but only diffusely, that is, if you refer, not things properly, but relationships or abstract concepts, you will consider them as something capable of being said something of, that is, as if they were units; 3. if the things referred to, either if they are many or only one, or if they have designation in the real things or in something abstract they will be considered objective, that is, they will be considered as if they formed a unit or «a thing».

3.3.1. Delimiting semantic objects involves two functions: 1) the attribution of reality to the mental object created thus considering it to exist, for example, a problem, and

1

With this expression I mean the situation in which someone may be involved in either if the intelligent speaker created it or if he conceived it including both him and what surrounds him.

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2) and delimiting the semantic object created in some way, either specifically, the problem raised at the meeting, or with context, the problem with this is… The intellective operation of delimiting semantic objects is, thus, mental, abstract, fantastic, free, and based only on the interests of the speaking subject. It is a mental operation necessary for the speaking subject to create an object to say of.

3.4. Creating a semantic class or essence (or a category). Once you have an object to say of, it is necessary to specify what you want to say of it. This intellective operation is double: it can be constituted with creating a class or essence or with the operation of relation. Both are closely connected: they both create semantic classes and are constituted with series of intellective operations basically consisting in the creation of relationships of signification that can either describe or put the thing created together with another one previously known. In both cases, however, the result is a new state of pragmatic affairs, that is, something capable to be described. Creating a class or essence consists in the creation of a concept defining and including a larger or lesser number of objects, that is, it consists in the creation of a category of things. To understand this intellective operation you must bear in mind the elements constituting it: 1) the essence to be created, that is, the concept defining a larger or lesser number of semantic objects, 2) the class (or category), that is, the set of semantic objects defined and grouped with the essence created. For example, when you say, mountain you may mean the relationship of signification because of which you say this is a mountain, that is, you apply the condition of “being a mountain” to anything you consider appropriate. You can say, for example, I am so tired that this walk is just like climbing a mountain; meaning with it the condition of “being a mountain”; or you may mean something putting together different semantic objects. For example, the mountains of Scotland are very low —probably the items designate 84

in the example might be said hills somewhere else. But the fact is that either if you designate the items in the example as mountains or hills you put together those semantic objects with the other semantic objects called mountains (the Pyrenees, the Appalachians, the Carpathians). 3) A semantic object classified as a mountain. For example, the Andes. Creating a class or essence involves two operations: a) the creation of an essence, that is, the concept, the class or category, and b) the attribution of the class created to the construct already selected delimited and attributed reality thus constituting the new semantic object (cf. 3.3.) The result of this intellective operation is a new creation, a new description of a state of pragmatic affairs, something capable of being denoted. Considering the function performed in a speech act, description is to be conceived as a state of pragmatic affairs able of being considered in it, or as the result of a relationship established between different states of affairs, or different semantic objects, or as the combination of both a state of pragmatic affairs plus a relation. In accordance with this the state of pragmatic affairs denoted with adjectives, for example, a relationship of attribution of the meaning given with the adjective to a semantic object with designation in the world (old in an old house), can in it be considered a description. In the same sense, when you say relation, from an intellective point of view, you merely say that two concepts or meanings are put together. The intellective operation of creation of a class or essence is very complex. The nature of the construct created entirely depends on the type of intellective construct created. The class created, then, can be: a) something entirely new. For example, a textile beach, a nudist beach; 85

b) something created on the base of meanings already existing in the language. For example, sandy beaches; c) something new made on the base of old meanings. For example, real mother in my real mother is my grand-mother; or d) something created merely by combining two existing traditional meanings. Compare cardinal in the combinations cardinal point, cardinal number, or cardinal error. In all these cases you must speak of a new construct, since in it, as an individual speech act, creating a class or essence means the creation of meanings to be applied to semantic objects, thus involving the three types of creation said above (the essence or the class, the application of it, and the semantic object) with a new meaning. In creating a class or essence abstraction plays an important role. The concept of abstraction, however, is not a simple one. The thing abstracted (that is, extracted) from the initial intuition, something arbitrary, capricious, and unpredictable, represents something existing in it apart from the thing it was given in. The characteristics abstracted in a speech act might be considered common to a group of things. But they are not. The speech act as an act of knowing is a singular and unique one. Because of this comparison with other acts of knowing is not possible. When you know something, the thing being known is new to you: it is something being created just because it is new. Consequently, there cannot be comparison with other objects in other speech acts; at the most there may be relation, that is, conceiving a concept relating it to an old one, that is, putting it together with another one previously known. Creating a class or essence is created with the mental operation of attributing indefinite or universal capability of designation to the construct being created. So, if you know something new, something you did not know earlier, say, an animal or a plant, you attribute universal capability of designation to it, that is, you assume that all possible members of the same kind are like the one you have in front 86

of you. That is, you define the category and all possible items of it with analogy. Afterwards when you find a new item of the same kind you will verify whether your idea of it is right or not; if it is right you will confirm your first intuition; on the contrary if your idea does not coincide with it, you will soon reject your first idea and create a new one. With this you can see that in human knowledge, the class or essence or category of something is first; then, the members or items of the class specified.

3.5. Relating the construct created The next intellective operation, relation, consists in putting together the object created so far to something previously known by the intelligent subject. For example, you cannot understand what a textile beach means unless you relate it to its contrary, a nudist beach. In the same way, you cannot understand the concept of father unless you know the concept of son; nor can you know what abstract is unless you relate it to concrete. Relation is to be executed in a double sense, a) internally in terms of traditional meanings, that is, in terms of the linguistic contents used; and b) externally in terms of the things being referred to. Because of the first aspect speakers will usually look at similar meanings or meanings with basic contents in common. It is the case of contraries: good: bad; young: old; new: old, etc. As to the second aspect, speakers will relate both the semantic class of objects and the semantic object created to the things they know. For example, a bookkeeper is not someone keeping books but an accountant: you cannot understand the meaning of this word unless you relate it to the things described: it is someone “keeping an accurate record of sums of money spent and received by a business or other organization”1. In the creation of meanings, the knowledge of things plays an important role. Speakers when they know something new, they will

1

Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary.

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conceive that piece of knowledge in terms of the cultural background they are in. In this sense, the cultural background of a language is different from the cultural background of another one, thus determining the meanings of the language in question. On the other hand, the intellection of a linguistic expression depends on the knowledge every speaker has of the contexts and universes of knowing the new piece of knowledge may belong to1.

3.6. Giving the construct created a name When the intelligent subject has created a new semantic class and applied it to a new semantic object, he will look for a label, that is, a name to keep the construct he has just created. The label the speaker looks for may be a traditional word or a new expression. Giving the construct created a name has two functions: it is used a) to keep the new construct created in the conscience of the intelligent subject; and b) to offer the new construct to others. Because of the first function intelligent subjects will relate the construct created to the world, that is, to the things surrounding them, thus creating a mental image of them, and verifying it in the world. Because of the second function the semantic construct created is made social and since it is offered to others, who will accept or reject it, may become traditional, that is, common in the linguistic community the speaker belongs to. Then what started as an act of knowing becomes a speech act, that is, an act of speaking, saying, and knowing. Intelligent subjects, with giving the construct created a name, make their mental intervention in the world into an act of saying thus manifesting themselves as subjects who create the world in their interiors thus making themselves responsible for the things said.

1

See Coseriu 2006, 72 and ff.

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Giving the construct created a name constitutes the central problem in linguistics, namely: establishing a functional nexus between a symbol and a meaning1. Linguistic expressions reveal the creativity, freedom, intelligence, and historicity of speakers. Giving the construct created a name is free election, thus making the historic language a set of possibilities offered to speakers. The language already performed and constituted in a tradition in the technique of speaking constitutes the background in accordance with speakers will perform their freedom to know, say, and speak. Giving the construct created a name has two important effects in the speech act. It involves a) the transformation of the nature of the construct being given a name, and b) the objectification of this construct. Thanks to giving the construct created a name words are objective and even have concrete existence in two aspects: a) they convey contents, that is, they mean; and b) they have concrete form, that is, they are made into contents with sounds. Because of giving the construct created a name words and meanings are interchangeable, that is, social, and, when in use, they become real. Meanings exist since they belong to the tradition of speaking in a speech community or language. In this sense, meaning is common: its degree of commonness constitutes its degree of reality. A mental construct, by the mere fact of being conceived, that is, by the mere fact of having been selected, delimited in some way, given reality, made a virtual2 semantic class, specified as an objective semantic class and a semantic object, and then given a name, acquires with it what you may say its conceptual contraries. Why? Because in the act of knowing the only means to delimit the constructs created out of concrete sensation is with imagining the

1 2

See Coseriu 1986, 58-59. Virtual (of meanings) involving all possible, probable, existing, non-existing or imaginary items.

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non-existence of the sensation they are made from. For example, if you feel cold and try to explain —if only to yourself— that state affecting only you and not others, the only thing you can do is opposing it to its absence. That is, you are cold and wish you were not cold. In this situation you mentally oppose cold to non-cold. The only means to delimit a sensation mentally is with imagining its nonexistence thus putting the concept of it together with its contrary. With this the initial sensation, which was sensitive, is made both sensitive and non-sensitive; it is sensitive since if affects you; and it is non-sensitive since you relate it to something created mentally and arbitrarily. That is, you conceive something both sensitively and conceptually, or in other words: you extract something not existing (non-sensitive) out of something existing (sensitive). And this creation is clearly conceptual since both cold and non-cold cannot coexist in the real world, the world of sense organs. The existence of contraries in meaning is a fact to be verified in languages. Most meanings are organized in contraries, for example, young-new, young-old, happy-unhappy, happy-miserable, something-naught, something-nothing, male-female, naturalartificial, beautiful-ugly, beautiful-plain, etc. Because of their abstract character, semantic constructs once given a name become linguistic signs, that is, they are conceived as something separated from their creators. If at the beginning, the initial intuition belonged only to the intelligent subject, the new construct once given a name is a word, something independent and separated from its creators. Meanings, once created and given a name, that is, words, do not belong to their creators but the community (the historic language or speech community speakers belong to) since meanings are offered to others. In this sense, giving the construct created a name is necessarily historic, that is, it is made with words belonging to a language, or with new words made with traditional elements and models thus belonging to a language as well.

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In this sense since language is speaking, saying, and knowing, language is the creation of meanings; a language (a historic language) constitutes a tradition in the technique of speaking offered to speakers. A technique of speaking involves a set of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas, common in a speech community. Speakers, at the same time as they create words and utterances of their own, will accept the forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas functioning in their speech communities. In this sense language is thought, logos, the creation of meanings, and the acceptance of models to be executed just to know, say, and speak. As an illustration of the aspects discussed so far in the intellective operation of giving the construct created a name let’s comment the formation of the word Eurosceptic. Here the inventor of this expression —whoever he may have been —used traditional forms, the root euro- used to represent the concept of Europe and the noun sceptic. The technique of combining two nouns is traditional in English but the application of it in the example is new: it is a traditional technique applied to traditional terms thus making a new coinage with a new meaning. The issue was to give a name to the fact “being against closer connection with Europe”1 as contrary to “being for closer connection with Europe”. The expression is new since it is perhaps the first word coined with this negative sense: you do not say, for example, *he is a reform-sceptic (for he is against reforms, or against this reform) or *he is an abort-sceptic (for he is against abortion). Anyway, it was an individual creation offered to others and accepted since it has form, plays a function, and means. Today it is a traditional word and may constitute a model for the creation of new ones (cf. Europhobia).

3.7. Determining the construct created. The last intellective operation in a speech act consists in orientating the construct created towards things in the real world. The

1

Cambridge Dictionary on line.

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construct created so far (something concrete made into abstract, delimited in some way, given a degree of reality, made virtual, objective, traditional (or common in a linguistic community) and thus social, is now a semantic construct designating, not things but categories or classes. Thanks to this, speakers can understand one another with a peculiarity: every speaker in every speech act can interpret those categories differently since they are virtual and potential. The construct created, consequently, needs the application of it to real things. This application is made through the intellective operation of determination. The intellective operation of determination is made by means of some historic elements usually referred as “determiners” in grammars (articles, demonstratives, possessives, some adverbs, certain syntactic combinations), or by means of context. The expression then says something about things in the world. For example, I may say occupation and may refer a class or things, that is, a general state of pragmatic affairs having to do with employment. In contrast, I may say my occupation and then I mean a job. And if I say teaching occupation then I refer the state of pragmatic affairs ‘occupation’ applied to an activity constituting a job. That is, in every case the category «occupation» is orientated to contexts or things existing in the real world, thus constituting different semantic objects, and giving different clues or shades of meaning or senses. Because of determination the semantic construct becomes real. Determination is something in language going beyond particular languages. Some languages do not have determiners, for example, Latin, and some use determiners in cases not used in other languages. For example, in English you do not use determiners in universal or abstract statements: men have reason; animals have instincts, etc., but this is not the case in Spanish (los humanos tienen razón, los animals tienen instintos). The function of determination is a language universal since it belongs to the speech act. Determination has to do with the creation of meanings, something inseparable from knowing, saying, and speaking. It manifests in languages, sometimes with determiners, 92

sometimes with certain syntactic combinations, sometimes through context or by means of gestures of any type. This fact manifests that speaking and the speech act are wider than languages. Determination is closely connected with saying since saying means the definition of intelligent subjects before the circumstance they are involved in. Without determination there is no saying. Determination plays an important role in human thought. Human thought, before determination, is constituted as a process of abstract creation; after determination the thing created is linked to reality. In a speech act, as we saw above, knowledge started with the apprehension of something concrete; then, concrete was changed into abstract; abstract into contents of conscience; contents of conscience into something virtual; virtual into objective; objective into traditional or common, and now, with determination, we can see how the construct fabricated is changed to refer to real things. Human knowledge by means of language (speech acts) starts with sensation and ends with the real. Real things are created since they are designated through determination, that is, real things are created when the abstract constructs created are applied to things surrounding the speaking subject by means of determination. A real thing, then, is both abstract and concrete. It is abstract since it necessarily means the systematization of facts of experience made by the intelligent subject in his conscience, and it is concrete since the systematization created is applied to the real and verified in the real. The line separating both phases in the human of act of conceiving or apprehending things, necessarily through language, is determination. Before determination the human subject creates something to know the world, after determination the human subject knows the world. Before determination the intelligent subject creates classes or categories, or even theories; after determination, the intelligent subject starts with a new act of knowing, thus “letting

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things speak to him”1. With this the act of knowing is perfectly described in the double direction it takes: it starts with the sensitive and concrete into the abstract, and it ends with the orientation of the abstract to the real. The speech act or, more precisely, the act of knowing, then, is the union of opposites.

Conclusion: If you base a speech act on an act of knowing you can see the following steps in the birth of language and the changing character of semantic constructs as they are being made: a) he speech act, an act of knowing, saying, and speaking starts with an initial intuition or aísthesis, something sensitive; b) then it is selected and made abstract and thus something existing only in the conscience of its creators; c) then it is delimited and given reality thus constituting a new semantic object, something apart from the conscience of its creators; d) then it is made a class of objects or a category and then related, thus making it virtual, e) then with the intellective operation of giving the construct created a name the new construct is made objective; e) and finally, with determination, it is changed into real.

1

These words are an interpretation of the following ones by Heidegger (Heidegger 1970, 14): “if Man is to be near Being, then He, before anything else, must learn to coexist with the Unnamed. […] Man must, before speaking, let Being speak to him again, running the risk that under that tense speech He can say little or nothing. Only in this way will the Word be given back the truth of its essence and Man the dwelling to live in the truth of Being (my translation from the Spanish edition)].

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Chapter 4: The Speech Act as an Act of Knowing1 Jesus Martinez del Castillo Department of Philology, Faculty of Business Studies and Tourism, Universidad de Almeria, Almeria, Spain Abstract: Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is nothing but the development of an intuition by the subject thus transforming it in words of a language. It is both individual and social. Since human subjects are free and historic, the study of speech acts is hermeneutics, that is, interpreting speech acts with knowing and the human reality. Keywords: Speech Act, Act of Knowing, the Human Subject, Speaking, Saying and Knowing, the Human Reality, Hermeneutics 1. Speaking and Knowing

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the meaningful intentional

1

International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue: Linguistics of Saying. Vol. 3, No. 6-1, 2015, pp. 31-38. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.15 A previous version with the title “The Speech Act” was published in European Scientific Journal, April 2014 edition vol.10, No.11 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 pp. 1-13. The problems implicit in these articles are dealt with differently in another article with the title, “Acto lingüístico, conocimiento e intención significativa en Coseriu y Ortega y Gasset”, Revista de Estudios Orteguianos, no 30 (2015), pp. 79-107, ISSN: 157-0079.

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purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is the performance of an intuition by the subject, both individual and social. It is individual since it is creation. It is social since it is executed using the parameters and means offered to the speaker by the speech community. Human subjects speak because they have something to say. They say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in1. This is so because speakers can know. In this sense, the speech act is nothing but the execution of an act of knowing. Language is born when it is performed in the speech act thus manifesting the execution of an act of knowing by the speaker. Human knowledge is nothing but the expression of human intelligence and freedom. It is aimed at dominating and manipulating the thing apprehended2. In the act of knowing intelligent subjects will manifest themselves as subjects who 1. separate themselves from the sensitive and concrete, something come to them through their sense organs; 2. transform the sensitive and concrete into something abstract and virtual; 3. in the depths of their conscience; 4. to overcome the circumstance they are in; 5. creating something new. Because of these dimensions, human subjects create

1 Ortega y Gasset 1994, 130. 2 This sentence would be interpreted differently if the speaker was a member of the West (Europe and America) or the East (Asia, in general). In the West human knowledge is aimed at dominating the object known, that is, things, real or imaginary; but in the East it is aimed at dominating the capabilities and potentialities of the intelligent subject knowing. Because of this, in the West, the knowledge of things constitutes Science, objectified knowledge, something easily transferable. As it is objective, theory and practice constitute two aspects of Science. On the contrary, in the East Wisdom deals with the subject’s perfection, something subjective in which practice and theory coalesce (See Martinez del Castillo, 2013c).

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a) their “I”, that is, their conscience; b) virtual things, that is, contents of conscience, that is, meanings (language); c) things and the world, that is the real; d) the language being spoken thus using words not belonging to them but the speech community; In this sense language manifests in a triple reality: 1. language as the creation of meanings and thought (logos, contents); 2. language as something common in a speech community thus something shared with others, that is, as a language. 3. language as individual performances, speech, manifesting itself in speech acts, the only reality of language with concrete existence1. Saying constitutes the manifestation of the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker2. In this sense saying goes beyond speaking and knowing. Saying determines both knowing above and speaking below. It determines knowing above since knowing is orientated and led with saying. It determines speaking below since speaking is the expression of both knowing and saying. The manifestation of the human reality of speaking saying and knowing is given in speech acts. Since human subjects speak and at the same time try to understand their reality, the study of language and speech acts is interpretation, that is, hermeneutics, founded and systematic revelation of contents in the conscience of the speaking

1

See Coseriu 1986b, p. 16. 2 See “The meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker”, in the special issue, Linguistics of Saying. Vol. 3, No. 6-1, 2015, pp. 31-38. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.15

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subject1. Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth2, thus constituting the hermeneutics of speech acts3. 2. Elements in Linguistics of Saying

Language is executed and born in speech acts, thus answering to the needs of expression of its creators, summarized in the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. Speakers will start with an individual new intuition, called αἲσθησις, aísthesis, by Aristotle4, something sensitive and concrete, or an unedited intuition (Coseriu). Because of the free character of human knowledge, this intuition or sensation suffers a series of transformations in its way of being. It is made something mental, virtual, objective, real and finally true. All these transformations manifest themselves in the linguistic expression5. They all are made with a series of intellective operations, thus transforming the act of knowing into a speech act. In this way a series of historic words, belonging to a language, thus historic common and a-circumstantial6, give sense in the way proposed by the individual speaker. In linguistics of saying you can distinguish two fundamental functions present in all linguistic expressions: the object of saying, the motivation of an utterance, and the object of knowing7, the topic used to express the object of saying. They both answer to the double character of the speech act as an act of knowing and saying by a subject who is in a circumstance and must overcome it8. These two functions are to be expressed differently in every speech act. Since the speech act is basically an act of knowing, the

1 Coseriu 2006, 57. 2 See Ortega y Gasset 2002b, 195. 3 See Martínez del Castillo 2011, 19-43. 4 De Anima III, 1, 425a, 14 apud Ortega y Gasset 1992a, 128. 5 Martinez del Castillo 2013c, § 2. 6 see Coseriu 1982, 290. 7 See the functions of the object of saying and the object of knowing in Martínez del Castillo 2004, footnote nº 30, p. 75 and ff.; see, as well, Martínez del Castillo 2012, § 12.4. 8 Ortega y Gasset 1994, p. 190.

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speaker executes a series of mental operations called intellective operations to express his meaningful intentional purpose. The speech act starts with selecting something from the initial intuition (aísthesis or sensation) or the whole intuition under a perspective (selecting from aísthesis. The construct selected will be delimited in some way and given reality (delimiting a designation) thus constituting a semantic object). The semantic object will be given an essence (creating a class or essence) thus assigning it to a class of semantic objects. The construct created so far will then be related to other semantic objects previously known by the speaker (relation) or existing in the tradition of speaking in the speech community. It will be given a name, new or traditional (giving the construct a name); it will be determined, that is, orientated to things in the world (determination). And finally, it will be expressed in words of a language thus offering it to other speakers (linguistic expression)1. The speaking subject with this creates something in his conscience, transforms it in its nature of being (sensitive and concrete into mental or abstract, virtual, objective, real and true), goes out of himself thus making himself human and participating with other speaking subjects. The speech act and thus language is born when the words uttered are given back to the subject in some way, that is, when words reverberate2.

1 The so-called intellective operations constitute two processes, the process of abstraction, and the contrary, the process of fixing or determining the construct created in the first one. They both constitute the act of knowing. 2 See Humboldt 1970, 77. Donatella Di Cesare (Di Cesare 1999, 38) interprets Humboldt’s words in the following way: “The performance of sensibility and intellect [Kant] is not the pure and simple manifestation of a representation already given […]. Rather it is something simultaneously happening in the very synthetic act [Kant]; it is even the condition for the synthesis to be given, since without that sensitive form unification of features would not happen, nor would the result of that unification [the representation] acquire a stable existence. It is only by means of sounds that representation, once determined, is separated from the internal activity producing it” (my translation and my introduction of expressions in brackets []).

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The speech act is, then, the synthesis of sensibility and intellect (Kant)1, an act of knowing, making possible the definition of the subject before the circumstance he is in2, using words of a language, making it an act of saying and speaking. The speech act thus is basically an act of knowing. 3. The Meaningful Intentional Purpose of the Individual

Speaker To illustrate the relationships of signification in the speech act, I am going to analyse the following expression constituting a possible speech act, Global Multidisciplinary Unesco World Science Day eConference3. To understand speech acts speakers will proceed intuitively, that is, they will contemplate the thing being said (the signification of the linguistic expression) and find out necessary connections in it (necessity and universality) thus adding new relationships of signification or new intuitions to understand and make sense out of the initial or determining intuition. With this, the speaker’s knowledge will be synthetic thus putting together their initial intuition, —sensation in its origin— and new intuitions they may have4. On the contrary, linguists or those speakers trying to explain the linguistic expression rationally, will be forced to use technical

1

See Kant 2004, pp. 47-52. See Ortega y Gasset 1992b, 46-47. 3 This statement was composed using two statements in the internet, both announcing the celebration of the same event: “Global Multidisciplinary, eConference” and “Unesco World Science Day Celebration”. The composition now being used is a specification of an aspect in the contents of both. In the analysis I am going to make, I want to discover the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker who created it and analyze the means used to achieve the purpose mentioned above. With this, based on analogy, I want to interpret speech acts (language) as the manifestation of something said (lektón, logos), using historic means of expression (a language), something born in the moment of speaking. 4 “Synthetic thinking is a posteriori in its consistency (to be understood a posteriori out of an intuition. […] In intuition we synthesize or add [another intuition] to the initial determining intuition (Ortega y Gasset 1992b, 81). 2

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words and proceed with a justified method to find out the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker who formulated the utterance. Because of this, the linguist’s explanation will result in interpretation since linguists are necessarily speakers of a language. They must find out the necessary connections an ordinary speaker creates and justify them thus adding something new not directly expressed. Their work will result in the hermeneutics of the speech act. 4. Syntactic Analysis

The combination in the example is constituted with a noun phrase with no determiner, in the singular, made up of a headword and different modifiers preceding the headword. The peculiarity of this particular speech act consists in the number of modifiers characterizing the head, everyone in a different way. The headword is a compound word: it is made up of the combination noun + noun (e[lectronics]-conference. The first noun (electronics) modifies the second one (conference), thus specifying its contents in a sense. Since the combination has no determiner, we cannot speak of individual things belonging to a class of things by definition, but of an individual thing belonging to a class created on the spot. An econference is something belonging to the class of e-conferences, a class of semantic objects to be included in the historic or traditional class of semantic objects “conference”. This procedure of modifying a headword with a noun is repeated in the example in different ways. First, the established headword (e-conference) is modified with another noun acting as the head of a new word group (day); second, day is modified with another noun (science); third, the combination science day is modified with another noun, world. Because of this, world and science modify e-conference, but indirectly through day; fourth, Unesco as a noun modifies the group constituted with the headword day; and fifth, global and multidisciplinary, as two adjectives modify e-conference directly. We can represent these syntactic relationships in the following way: 101

[[[global [multidisciplinary]]: [[Unesco] [world science day]]: [econference]]]

The conclusion we can draw from this analysis is that, since all modifiers are either nouns (day, science, world, Unesco, electronics) or denominal1 adjectives (global, multidisciplinary) the combination refers to permanent conditions defining the different headwords, that is, they all play a classifying function2, thus creating classes of semantic objects or permanent characteristics of the headword. 5. Intellective Analysis

Now, then, our problem consists in finding out the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker and the reason for the subsequent success of the speech act: what is the aim of this speech act? Or considered from the perspective of the hearer, what is said in the combination? In the combination we can see the following relationships of signification created with the corresponding intellective operations, 1. a semantic construct in as much as it is selected out of the initial intuition of the original speaker3. The original intuition is something having prompted selection from aísthesis of the historic word “conference”, an element designating, not a semantic object, but a class of objects. So, from now on, the semantic construct will be specified with successive intuitions. The speech act starts with selecting something out of the original intuition (aísthesis) about conference, something you may have or have not, initially being sensitive and concrete, now being made mental, that is, abstract with the mere fact of being selected out

1 See Quirk et al. 1985, 432. 2 Quirk et al. 1985, 1340. 3 From now on, the different relationships of signification found out will be paraphrased in this way and expressed with paragraph indicators (1.), (2.), (3.) etc. The following relationships indicated with those paragraph indicators to be found out will include the previous one. The last relationship of signification will include all the previous relationships of signification signalled.

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of the sensitive and concrete. The human subject selects, that is, extracts from the sensitive, creates or adopts a construct to apply what he is going to fabricate to it. Since the construct made so far has been changed in its mode of being thus being transformed from the sensitive and concrete and made abstract, the subject attributes semantic character to it. It is no longer sensation but something new added to the image selected out of sensation. What the subject has selected is nothing existing out of his conscience. This selecting from aísthesis involves then three aspects: A) creating something new, B) making the thing created mental, that is, abstract thus attributing semantic character to it, and C) considering it independent from the speaker who created it. Sensation (intuition, aísthesis) was something lived by the subject. The fabrication and consideration made is something in our conscience, based on the character of intuition. The thing selected by the mere fact of having been selected is something extracted1 out of the thing it was given in, the initial intuition or aísthesis. With the intellective operation of selecting from aísthesis we execute the synthesis explained by Kant: the union of something, in principle sensitive and concrete, the initial intuition, and something not yet meaning but belonging to the world of meanings. Selecting from aísthesis can be made in different ways. It can start with sensation or it can be constituted with a mental fabrication as in the case of metaphor and pure creation. In both cases it starts with intuition, something you may have or may not. In the case of sensation, selecting from aísthesis relates to designation, something to be defined as well mentally in the very act of speaking saying and knowing. In the case of pure creation, it relates to a point of view

1 For Ortega y Gasset, abstracting means extracting something out of the thing it is given in (see Ortega y Gasset 1992a, 57-58).

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created and added by the speaking subject to create the construct mentally. In our analysis so far, we have nothing but the base to construct something new. We need to add something on it created in our conscience. Back to the example, we can see the subsequent relationships of signification. 2. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being into something abstract, attributed semantic character, in as much as it is delimited and referred to the world of meanings, thus made a semantic object. The semantic construct once made semantic must be delimited, that is, given limits in some way. Because of the delimiting of the semantic object the construct is attributed reality in some way, thus making it belong to the world of meanings. Delimitation thus involves two intellective operations: giving limits to the construct created so far and giving it reality. In this sense it is no longer a mere mental construct but a semantic object. The intellective operation of delimitation is an entirely free, fantastic, mental, imaginative operation, with no base on the real. The speaking saying and knowing subject delimits and attributes reality to the construct made so far because he wants and he attributes reality to in in the way he does. Once created the semantic object, it is necessary to define it. This is something to be made with the following intellective operation, creating a class or essence. 3. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being and thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings, thus made a semantic object, in as much as it is assigned to a class of semantic objects. An essence is nothing but the mental image of the semantic object it defines. It has to do with the semantic class the object belongs to. The peculiar thing in the combination being analysed is that the semantic object referred to has many modifiers. As we saw 104

in the syntactic analysis (cf. § 4), the semantic object conference, specified with e-(lectronics) as a compound noun, is modified with two nouns (day and Unesco); day is the head of a new group of modifiers (World Science Day) and Unesco, thus modifying the headword e-conference, not directly, but through day (Unesco World Science Day). Apart from these, the denominal adjectives global and multidisciplinary complete the definition of the headword, econference. Since all modifiers are either nouns or denominal adjectives, they all imprint a permanent character on the headword, very apt to create a class of semantic objects, but with a slight difference. Noun modifiers in the combination semantically determine the semantic object created, but the denominal adjectives global and multidisciplinary define, that is, describe the type of semantic object. At the same time since both adjectives are denominal they cannot be intensified: What is the e-conference like? Global and multidisciplinary, not *very global or *very multidisciplinary1. Consequently, the description they convey is very much like determination. Because of this, the essence of the semantic object and the class of objects to be created with it has this double character: it is made both with semantic determination and description, with the restriction said. Once all modifiers are applied to the headword (e-Conference) we have a very complex class of semantic objects, to be decomposed in different semantic classes starting from the higher to the lesser: A. the one constituted with the noun conference; B. the one constituted with the combination of e(lectronic) and conference: e- conference; C. the one constituted with the combination of science day and e-conference: science day e-conference;

1

See Warren 1984b.

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D. the one constituted with the combination of world and science day e-conference: world science day econference; E. the one constituted with the combination of Unesco and world science day e-conference: Unesco world science day e-conference; and F. the one constituted with the combination of global and multidisciplinary with Unesco world science day econference: global multidisciplinary Unesco world science day e-conference. That is, the definition of the semantic object in the combination is made with the assignment of it to different semantic classes, they all keeping a hierarchy with one another. This hierarchy can be explained in terms of inclusion and, the contrary, implication, in the following way: the class at the left includes the one at the right and vice versa, the class at the right implies the one at the left, in the following representation: conference: e-conference: science day e-conference: world science day e-conference: Unesco world science day econference: global and multidisciplinary Unesco world science day e-conference. That is, all semantic classes stated belong to the semantic class of conference. The concept of the semantic class conference is progressively specified in the sense stated in the other semantic classes, thus defining the semantic object created. So, this relationship of signification can be stated in the following way: 4. the construct selected, transformed in its way of being and thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings and thus made a semantic object, assigned to the class of semantic objects conference, including the class e-conference, including the class science day e-conference, including the class world science day e-conference, including the class Unesco world 106

science day e-conference, in as much as it is defined as global and multidisciplinary. Semantic objects become potential things1 when they are assigned to a semantic class of objects. For a human subject to apprehend something as a thing means assigning the thing apprehended to a class of semantic objects. In other words: a semantic object is nothing unless it is referred to a class either existing in the tradition of speaking in force in the speech community (the world of meanings) or created, that is, invented because of the intuition lived. Because of this, there may be semantic classes with only one item, for example, proper names. The assignment of semantic objects to a class thus making them things is something we can verify in the verbal behaviour of speakers. The first thing a human subject would typically ask when apprehending something new is, what is it? The semantic object with its individual characteristics is before the speaker to be contemplated, but this fact does not guarantee the intellection of it. To understand what the new semantic object is it is necessary to assign it to a class of semantic objects, on the contrary, the human subject would understand nothing. With the intellective operation of creation of a class or essence we discovered what the essence of the semantic object is, but we do not yet know the exact signification of it: what is the sense of the example being analysed? What is the meaningful intentional purpose of the speaker who stated it? To know this, we must relate the example to other meanings we may know in our linguistic world,

1 “Things apprehended, amongst which a human subject lives as a prisoner, do not constitute a world. Properly speaking they are not things, but ‘living businesses’ articulated with one another thus constituting a pragmatic perspective. They are made things when they are liberated from that perspective and attributed being, that is, a consistency proper of their own, alien to us. But then, they will appear before us as existing in a world […]. They constitute a world the product of our phantasy thus constituting the great phantasmagoria. A world as such a world is something fantastic. […] Now them, things given to us are given in a world” (Ortega y Gasset 1992a, 131-32) (my translation).

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either retrieved from our individual tradition in knowing, or from the tradition in force in our speech community. 5. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings thus made a semantic object, assigned to the class of semantic objects of conference, including the class of e-conference, including the class of science day e-conference, including the class of world science day e-conference, including the class of Unesco world science day e-conference, defined as global and multidisciplinary, in as much as it belongs to a piece of the world of meanings. Relating a semantic object to other semantic objects, they all belonging to the world of meanings, means separating it from the others and considering it as identical with itself, that is, as unique and different. This has to do with a theory of knowledge. The final process in learning is understanding things individually. Things given in the tradition are things in so far as they are given . According to Coseriu, at the level of contents the meanings of a language appear determined with the fundamental modes of knowing given in the different spheres of knowing or known worlds. Something is true or false depending on the mode of knowing (or universe of knowing) and known world the utterance or text is created in accordance with. For Coseriu, a universe of knowing has to do with the basic and fundamental modes of knowing of humans2. Universes of knowing constitute fundamental acts of knowing. In universes of knowing language is always presented as the manifestation of an autonomous mode of knowing. Coseriu establishes four universes of knowing just because the fundamental modes of knowing are four, namely, a) the universe of common experience, b) the universe of science and technics scientifically founded, c) the universe of phantasy and arts, and d) the universe of faith. The truth of the different 1

1 See quotation in the previous footnote. 2 Coseriu 2006, 73.

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universes of knowing is to be determined internally in terms of the cohesion the different universes of knowing have thus constituting different known worlds. A statement such Hamlet was Prince of Denmark cannot be verified in history but in the universe of knowing of phantasy. Universes of knowing are determined with the so-called worlds of reference, spheres of knowledge, or known worlds, which are three: 1) the world of necessity and causality (in the Kantian sense1), that is, the sphere of knowledge of ordinary sensitive experience, the world proper of empirical science; 2) the world of freedom and aim-targeted purposes (also in the Kantian sense), that is, the world of human creations and culture in general; and 3) the world of faith2. In the world of meanings, the different universes of knowing are considered independent3 from one another. In this sense every universe of knowing has its peculiarities in connection with the modes of knowing by means of which the things said are true or not. For example, if you say the say the following prayer Our Father, Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven, You’ll have to admit as well that it is true in the universe of knowing of the Christian Faith, however contrary to facts it may appear. In the example analysed the combination belongs to the universe of knowing of science and the world of cultural events. So, we can state this new relationship of signification:

1

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) distinguished two types of knowledge: knowledge a priori, the one in the verification of which you do not need experience, and a posteriori knowledge verified in experience. A priori knowledge is necessary, and a posteriori knowledge is contingent. To make science he established synthetic a priori statements based on an individual fact (a posteriori knowledge) adding to it universality and necessity (a priori knowledge) (see Kant 2004). 2 Cf. Coseriu 1988, 193-200. 3 See Ibid.

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6. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings thus made a semantic object, assigned to the class of semantic objects conference, including the class e-conference, including the class science day e-conference, including the class world science day e-conference, including the class Unesco world science day e-conference, defined as global and multidisciplinary, assigned to a piece of the world of meanings, in as much as it is assigned to the universe of knowing of science and the known world of cultural events Consequently, the character of this speech act is in accordance with the universe of knowing of science. Once we know this, it is necessary to specify its individual character, 7. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings thus made a semantic object, assigned to the class of semantic objects of conference, including the class e-conference, including the class science day e-conference, including the class world science day e-conference, including the class Unesco world science day e-conference, defined as global and multidisciplinary, assigned to a piece of the world of meanings, assigned to the universe of knowing of science and the known world of cultural events in as much as it is an invitation to participate in the event stated. The combination analysed is not a statement or an announcement. It is a long message said with the intention of inviting scientists all over the world to participate in the event being organized in the way stated. With this we found out the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker who formulated it. All scientists and researchers of any branch of knowledge are invited to participate. But, realize this: it is an e-conference to be celebrated with all the prerequisites and conditions proper of the referred to semantic class of objects and the universe of knowing the semantic 110

object belongs to. The original speaker needn’t say these prerequisites and conditions beforehand. They are given for granted or expected to be specified in another speech act. Besides, these types of invitations are usually accompanied with a separate text explaining the pre-requisites and conditions. Things known or supposed to be known are not usually said or said at the opportune occasion1. With this, the invitation in the combination is true. To complete our analysis, it is necessary to mention two other intellective operations in the speech act, giving the construct a name and orientating it to real things. The former has to do with the central fact in linguistics: “it consists in the eminently mental faculty of establishing a functional nexus between signifier and signified”2. Language is nothing, but the mental activity of speakers executed with the meaningful intentional purpose of saying something. Human subjects speak because they have something to say and they say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in. Finally, the last intellective operation affecting the speech act is determination, that is, it is necessary to orientate the new expression to things in the world thus making it real. The last relationship of signification to be remarked in the combination consists in the grammatical determination, 8. The construct selected, transformed in its way of being and thus abstract, attributed semantic character, delimited and referred to the semantic world of meanings and thus made a semantic object, assigned to the class of semantic objects of conference, including the class e-conference, including the class of science day e-conference, including the class of world science day e-conference, including the class of Unesco world science day e-conference, defined as global and multidisciplinary, assigned to a piece of the world of meanings, assigned to the universe of knowing of science and the known world of cultural events, an invitation to 1 See Coseriu 1992, 114. See also Ortega y Gasset 1970. 2 Coseriu 1986a, 58-59.

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participate in the event stated, in as much as it is orientated to real things. In effect, the combination has no grammatical determiner. This means that the following semantic objects are implicitly referred to, a) some semantic objects to be included in the semantic class econference, b) some semantic objects not to be included in the semantic class e-conference, mentioned implicitly as opposing the first ones, and c) this semantic object is one of those to be called econference. In this sense this one is the only one having been created and singled out in the world of meanings and the universe of knowing it belongs to. With this the semantic object is made real, an event likely to happen on the date stated1.

Conclusions The speech act is an act of speaking saying and knowing, an act of creation, of establishment of connections in the thing perceived, apprehended and purposefully transformed in its way of being, created in the conscience of the speaking, saying and knowing subject. Initially the thing perceived is sensitive and concrete, then it is transformed in its way of being and made abstract mental and virtual; then it is made objective, true, and finally it is orientated to things in the world thus made real. Language thus is nothing but intellective activity2, performed in the speech act. Knowledge and thus language then is the union of the opposites (sensibility and intellect, Kant). Consequently, all aspects having to do with language and knowledge are to be revised: language is the creation of meanings3; meaning is contents of conscience, logos, thought4. Things are pragmatic businesses (prágmata)5, that is, something created on the interest of the human subject. Reality is the set of things created by

1

See a representation of the speech act, appendix I. 2 Coseriu 1985, 42. 3 Coseriu 1985, 205-206. 4 Coseriu 1985, 40. 5 Ortega y Gasset 2002, 131-132.

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intelligent subjects thus synthesizing sensibility and intellect. Truth is the adequacy of things said (lektón) to the universe of knowing they are assigned to. And the speech act is the execution of the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker.

Appendix I: The Speech Act as an Act of Knowing1

Figure 1: The speech act as an act of knowing The act of knowing starts with an initial intuition or aísthesis. Then the subject selects from his aísthesis thus making the thing selected abstract. Then it is delimited and

1 See Martínez del Castillo, 2013c, Appendix I.

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assigned to a class of semantic objects thus making it virtual. It is related to other meanings in the tradition. Then it is given a name and determined thus making it objective and eventually with the linguistic expression it is made real.

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Chapter 5: Meaning and Language1 Jesus Martinez del Castillo Department of Philology, Faculty of Business Studies and Tourism, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain Abstract: Meaning defines language because it is the internal

function of language. At the same time, meaning does not exist unless in language and because of language. From the point of view of the speaking subject meaning is contents of conscience. From the point of view of a language, meaning is the objectification of knowledge in linguistic signs. And from the point of view of the individual speaking subject, meaning is the expressive intentional purpose to say something. Keywords: Language, A Language, Contents of Conscience,

Designation, Meaning, Sense, The Speaking Subject, The Speech Community 1. The Role of Meaning in Language. Meaning is a paradox. Meaning defines language since it is in direct connection with the very existence of language. Language is nothing but the creation of meanings2. Meaning thus is universal and necessary for language to exist. At the same time meaning manifests itself in language. In this sense meaning is real. It manifests itself in the words and expressions of a language. From this point of view, meaning is diverse, that is, multifarious and multiple. Because of this, meaning is something belonging to a language, something historic,

1

Jesús Martinez del Castillo. Meaning and Language. International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue: Linguistics of Saying. Vol. 3, No. 6-1, 2015, pp. 50-58. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.17 2 Coseriu 1985a: 26.

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that is, made in a speech community in history. Real meaning exists only in speech acts. Under this perspective meaning manifests itself as sense. In the first aspect, meaning is the defining internal function of language and constitutes the original function of it1. It is nothing but contents of conscience2, something created when language is created, that is, when language is spoken. Language exists because the speaking subject aims at saying something in the circumstance he is in3. In the second aspect, meaning is something objective, or rather, objectified, belonging to a language, something offered to speakers from the tradition in the technique of speaking. Because of this meaning is common4 and participated5 in a speech community and thus contingent but virtual6. Meaning constitutes the primary function of language, that is, to mean. Language is determined and thus defined by its meaningful function, its internal determination: creating meanings. In this sense, language is autonomous7 since it has an internal determination. In the third aspect, meaning manifests itself a sporadic, contextual, and individual. Since language is real, something lived by speakers8, meaning appears in contexts and situations, that is, meaning is sense. 2. Meaning and Language Use

The primary function of language, the creation of meanings, must not be confused with language use. Language is used for specific external purposes, the most important of which is communication.

1

Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 46. 2 Coseriu 1985a: 27. 3 Cf. Ortega y Gasset, 1992, pp. 46-47. 4 Cf. Coseriu 1988, p. 70. 5 Cf. Coseriu 1988, 43. 6 Cf. Coseriu 1982, p. 296. 7 Coseriu 1985a, pp. 23-33. 8 Cf. Martínez del Castillo 2013.

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Because of this language is instrumental1. But language cannot be identified with the use made of it. Language is to be defined by its primary function, its internal determination. The use of language constitutes the external determination of language. Language cannot be defined by its external but internal determination. Language defines itself because of meaning and thus both language and meaning are autonomous2 but not instrumental. This means that language primarily is something coming to speakers from their inside3. Human subjects speak because they have something to say; they say because they know4. Knowing and saying thus are internal functions of human subjects, who live in a circumstance5. Since human subjects create society with language, language manifests itself as a language6. Languages form different social institutions, something coming to individual subjects from their outside7. Therefore, language properly speaking is not expression with meaning. Expression certainly exists in language, but language is primarily meaning and not the other way around. In this sense, according to Coseriu, you'd rather say language is meaning with expression8. And in dealing with the meaningful function of language or the internal determination of it, language must be understood as ένέργεια, that is, creative activity9, free and end-directed activity10. Language is not use but the creation of meanings. Language as ένέργεια is both creating meanings and fixing those meanings. The

1

Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 38. Coseriu 1985a, pp. 23-33. 3 Cf. Ortega y Gasset 2001, p. 259. 4 Cf. Martínez del Castillo, 2004. 5 Ortega y Gasset 1994, p. 190. 6 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 48. 7 Cf. Ortega y Gasset 2001, p. 259. 8 Coseriu 1985a, p. 38. 9 Coseriu 1985a, p. 23. 10 Coseriu 1988, p. 249. 2

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objectification of knowledge1 is given in linguistic signs. Now then, ‘to know’ means conceiving something as identical with itself and different from all other things. But that thing conceived as identical with itself and different from all other things is nothing but contents of conscience, that is, meanings2. And in this you have the reason for language to exist: meaning is nothing but the internal function of language, something in connection with knowledge. Language is nothing but intelective activity3. In this way language is the union of intuition and expression4. It is the creation of meanings and signs to express those meanings. Because of this you can ask whether language is absolute, or if language is only a language. Language has two dimensions. Language is, first, the formulation or execution of an intuition. It is the relationship of an absolute subject and his creation. In this sense language is absolute, that is, has no limits in creating meanings. And language is, second, the execution of the relationship established between two speaking subjects. The first dimension is the relation subject-object, the execution of an intuition on the part of the speaker in words of a language. The second is the relation subject-subject: the creative subject of language presupposes other subjects with whom he has something in common. In this sense language is historic, that is, made in a speech community in history. The first dimension of language is creation, the second dimension, otherness5, that is, speaking to others. Language is intended for others. Language always manifests as a language6, a historic language, that is, a language having been made in a speech community in history. Language thus is the apprehension of being7, that is,

1

Coseriu 1985a, p. 27. Coseriu 1985a, p. 27. 3 Coseriu 1985a, p. 42. 4 Coseriu 1985a, p. 30. 5 Coseriu 1985a, p. 31. 6 Coseriu 1985a, p. 16. 7 Coseriu 1985a, p. 32. 2

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apprehension not of things but the apprehension of that aspect making the thing perceived to be a thing. In this sense language is the delimitation of species1, that is, something is made to be a thing because of language. This apprehension of things is made not by an absolute subject but a historic subject, who as far as it is historic is at the same time social2. In this sense language is λόγος, that is, both the creation of Being (the class of things, the category) by an absolute subject, and intersubjective λόγος, that is, form and expression of the historicity3 of Man4. Human beings live in a linguistic world created by them as historic subjects (subjects who made themselves in participation with others in a speech community in history). Language relates to the first dimension, the dimension of human subjects and Being (Man and Being). Language as a language relates to the relation of human subjects to other human subjects, who by means of language, are attributed humanity, that is, the capacity of asking for Being and interpreting it, the capacity of asking for things and entities thus interpreting them5. This apprehension of Being, manifests itself as contents of conscience and historic meanings.

1

“l…] language does not certainly create natural “things” or entities, or, in other words, objective things thus attributing them a particular way of being […] nor does it create being usually attributed to “things”: on the contrary, it acknowledges and delimits modalities of being in things. Because of this language is delimitation of species or […] “classes” of things (classes that, […] from the point of view of its being objectified, can be as well classes of only one member or even empty classes)” (Coseriu 2006, pp. 73-74) (my translation). 2 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 32. 3 Historicity, the conditions defining and affecting a subject who comes to the world in a definite time. Because of these conditions human subjects will belong to a community of thought, forms, contents and meanings defining a speech community or a language. 4 Coseriu 1985, p. 32. 5 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, 32-33.

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3. Speech Acts

Language is activity, the activity of speaking1, consisting in a set of mental operations executed with the purpose of “saying something about something with the help of the signs of a language”2. Language does not exist. It does not have concrete existence. It merely exists as the performance of that activity. Language exists in the series of speech acts performed by speakers3. A speech act is the performance of language on the part of the speaker. Speech acts have concrete existence thus representing the manifestation of language both in it and in its historic forms. A speech act has to do with the act of apprehending things, that is, with knowledge. A speech act is the manifestation of a unique intuition on the part of the speaker4. In this sense speech acts are determined with the meaningful intentional purpose of speakers. Speakers speak because they have something to say and they say because they can know. Speech acts, thus, are acts of knowing, saying, and speaking5. Language exists as the creation of meanings and as such language is at the same time and because of it the creation of knowledge6. On the other hand, a language exists as a sketch, model, draft, form, or pattern of an activity7. A language exists virtually because it is knowledge, the knowledge of speakers to speak, that is, idiomatic knowledge8. The only thing really existing with concrete existence9 is speech acts, innumerable speech acts. Anything in language is in speech 1

Coseriu 1988, p. 249. Coseriu 1982, p. 291. 3 Coseriu 1988, p. 45. 4 Coseriu 1986a, pp. 27-28. 5 Cf. Martínez del Castillo, 2004. 6 Coseriu 1985, p. 26-27. 7 Coseriu 1988, p. 48. 8 Coseriu 1982, p. 313. 9 Coseriu 1985, p. 87. 2

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acts. Speech acts display what language and a language are, something being executed in a single act, determined with the meaningful expressive intention of the individual speaker1. The purpose of language, to mean, to create meanings, to say something about something with the means of a language, is performed in speech acts. The purpose of a language, speaking with someone else, is performed by means of words, linguistic concepts associated with linguistic signs. The function of speech acts is to use those words and concepts in such a way that they can refer to things in the world. Since idiomatic knowledge is virtual, linguistic signs refer not to objects but classes of objects. It is necessary then to orientate linguistics signs to real things. And this is performed in speech acts by means of the function of determination, something to be performed with the means of expression of a language thus referring them to contexts and situations2. The function of speech acts is to apply virtual concepts to real things. Concepts are universal and virtual, able to be applied of individual objects thus predicating the essential characteristics they potentially denote. Speech acts thus represent an act of transformation of abstract concepts, applicable only to the essence of things, into concrete expressions of meaning with designation in real things. Speech acts are thus the creation of sense, the creation of concrete forms of the activity of speaking, that is, the creation of language or the performance of language. 4. Meaning and Speech

Speakers will always speak of something (designation), using the elements of a language (historic means, that is, meanings). They will say something with the help of designation and (historic) meanings, thus creating sense. Speakers create sense whenever they speak. In this sense speakers bear in mind who they direct their speech to (the listener, the “you”) and what are the circumstances affecting their

1

Cf. Martínez del Castillo, 2004; cf. a summary of the theory saying in Martínez del Castillo, 2013, § 12. 2 Cf. Coseriu 1982, 290-319.

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speech (contexts and situations). Bearing this in mind, speakers select the elements most suitable to their needs of expression. The result is a series of speech acts that as far as they are performed can be studied and analysed as texts. In a text, that is, in the individual performance of language, language can be used at two levels: a) the level of denotation, or b) the level of connotation. An expression is at the denotative level when it means the usual meaning given in a language. For example, green means colour and in this sense, you can say grass is green; the green grass. It appears green But sometimes a word may get certain clues and shades of meaning not belonging to the meaning of the word but to language use under certain circumstances. In this case we speak of connotation (or connotative level). So connotative meaning is not the meaning belonging to the language but to certain uses associated with the meaning of the word usually created in a group of people. You can see the difference between denotation and connotation in the following examples, A green tree; green leaves; get him eat freshly potatoes and greens; the green fruits were as hard as rocks1. in contrast with I’m waiting the green light from you; the minister gave the green light to the project2. The examples in the first group denote, that is, they convey the traditional meaning, the usual (or neutral) meaning of a language. The examples in the second group, however, represent senses that once were individual or metaphorical and now made traditional. As senses, they were inserted in the tradition of the language as 1 2

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extensions of meaning (connotation) of the original meaning (denotation). In the case of these examples it is easy to see the connection of the meaning green and the use of ‘green’. The meaning in the second group constitutes a metaphor formed on the base of traffic lights. In this way you can say that the meaning of the word green is simply green, that is, it has not changed. Although metaphoric it is merely an extension of meaning of green, based on one of the uses it has today. However, other uses of green can be interpreted but not at first sight. Compare, the church green, the village green Hogan went slightly green1. The meaning in these examples is another extension of meaning formed on the base of a change in the category used, thus forming a metonymy. The change consists in the shift in the way of giving meaning. In the denotative case green conveys meaning with the application of an open dimension of signification to a semantic object, that is, as an adjective. In the new sense and due to the frequent use of the adjective in green grass the adjective was made to convey its meaning, green, in the way expressed with nouns. The meaning in the last examples, however, cannot be guessed unless you know the expression. Hogan went green because he was green with rage, that is, because of the emotional state Hogan was in (he was visibly upset, and the colour of his complexion changed— only temporarily, it is supposed). Here you have an extension of meaning giving a new sense based on a metaphorical use inserted in the tradition of speaking. But sometimes there is no transparent explanation in certain uses introduced in the tradition of speaking of a language. In these expressions unless speakers know the expression they will not understand the meaning of it. In the following examples, Alex has green fingers (British English). Jim has a

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green thumb (American English), the meaning of the expressions cannot be explained but historically, that is, referring the expression to the language already performed and constituted in a tradition of speaking. These expressions belong to repeated speech. They mean to be good at gardening1. In the same sense you must know what it is all about to interpret the expression, …green activists. In this expression green does not appear as an adjective but a noun, meaning activists particularly involved in the protection of the environment. Sometimes words may exist in the language meaning something disparaging in its form and contents, with no connection with the original reality the word was formed in accordance with. The examples An infant; infantile have lost the connection they had with the elements composing them in their origin. Infant is to be referred to its Indo-European origin. The meaning it conveys does not match with its form. The word is a combination of a prefix, -in, plus the stem of a verb. The verb has disappeared, and the extant prefix is no longer operative in the word, although it is operative in the language. Infant comes from the negative prefix in- plus the Indo-European verb having prompted the Gr. fari or Gr. femi (=to speak), thus meaning «someone who cannot speak yet». These relationships of signification were lost. Now the word is an independent one thus conveying clues of meaning with no connection with its origin, etymology or formation. The vocabulary of a language thus is a set of elements, everyone with a particular historic explanation, but this explanation does not necessarily provide us with sufficient reasons for the explanation of its meaning. The case of infant and infantile is illustrative enough to conclude that the etymology or the composition of words and meanings is not the explanation of the meaning of words. It is

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necessary to know something else in every case. In examples like these, you can see how words can constitute facts of language, facts of evolution, or facts of speech. Denotation and connotation relate to language use thus involving the evolution of the meaning of words in a language or in language use. Anyway, the analysis of meaning or the analysis of any aspect of a historic language is the analysis of the present state of a tradition. To this respect it is necessary to refer to the words by Ortega y Gasset: [Words] have a privileged sense, the greatest or authentic one, namely, the one they had when they were created […] every word originally is the verbal or linguistic reaction before a typical living situation (my translation)1.

It is necessary to say that words are not created suddenly, but they are created and re-created whenever they are used in speech. The important thing in the analysis of meaning thus is not the form of words but guessing out those conditioners having prompted the speaking subject to select some means of expression (contents, included) and not others. Because of this, the analysis of words must be hermeneutics, that is, interpretation, “a systematic founded revelation of some contents”2, or the science of interpretation with the purpose of “determining in which whole the part must be remitted”3. 5. The Configuration of Speaking

To determine the value of meaning it is necessary to determine the functional language (cf. 5.2) a word or expression belongs to. Meaning is given in the activity of speaking and this must be specified in the techniques determining it. A language or historic language is a series of techniques for any

1

Ortega y Gasset, 2002, p. 24. Coseriu, 2006, p. 57. 3 Ortega y Gasset, OC, IX, p. 36. 2

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possible speech historically determined1. In this sense, language is a historic technique in the activity of speaking2. In fact, the different languages are nothing but modes in the activity of speaking3. The different modes in the activity of speaking, as far as they are homogeneous, constitute the different functional languages. A historic language is not homogeneous, but analogous, and the elements in it keep different types of relationships of signification with one another.

5.1. The Architecture of the Language A technique of speaking as far as it is a technique, that is, the knowledge required to speak (idiomatic knowledge), has both an external and internal equilibrium. Every language, every technique of speaking, has an architecture, or the external equilibrium of speaking, and a structure, or the internal equilibrium of speaking. More precisely: any technique of speaking has an architecture and in every part of that architecture has a structure4. The architecture of the technique of speaking as far as it represents the external equilibrium of the technique of speaking is the synthesis of idiomatic knowledge, determined, within synchrony, with three sets of differences: 1. diatopic differences, or the differences in the technique of speaking determined with the territory the language is spoken in. The differences originated in this way are called dialects, accents, or dialectal accents. For example, the English language is constituted with a large group of dialects, called, roughly speaking, British English, Scottish English, Cokney, American English, Australian English, and South-African English. Something similar happens with all languages. A dialect is a syntopic language. 2. diastratic differences, or the differences in the technique of speaking determined with the different social strata in connection

1

Coseriu 1988, p. 48. Coseriu 1985, p. 194. 3 Coseriu 1985, p. 17. 4 Coseriu 1992, p. 290. 2

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with the disciplines or fields of knowledge proper of those social strata. The differences originated in this way constitute the levels of speech. In this sense you can single out the language of guild corporations: the language of doctors, computer engineers, legal language, etc. These languages do not have geographic definition, since dialects may have diatopic differences as well. A level of speech constitutes a synestratic language; and 3. diaphasic differences, or the differences in the technique of speaking determined with situations and contexts, thus giving birth to the styles of speech. In this sense you can point out formal speech or informal speech, poetic language, etc. These functional languages do not have geographic definition either, but they can include regional differences. A style of speech constitutes a symphasic language1.

5.2. The Functional Language. Consequently, the meaning of a language is given only in a functional language, that is, the language homogenous in it, the only language capable to be spoken. A historic language is constituted, as can be guessed out from the explanation of the architecture of the language, with many functional languages. As a matter of facts, speakers know several functional languages. A uniform and homogeneous technique of speaking is a syntopic, synestratic and symphasic language, thus constituting a functional language. A functional language is a technique of speaking considered in a point of space, a level of speech and a style of speech. It is a completely homogenous language, the only language liable to be spoken2. In this way and considering the variety of idiomatic knowledge, every speaker knows several functional languages. For example, a speaker may know the formal language and informal language in his speech community, the language in his professional field, the language used with his group of friends, the language in his family, the language spoken in America and the language spoken in

1 2

Coseriu 1986b, p. 306. Cf. Coseriu 1992, p. 291.

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England, and so on. In some languages there are formal differences separating the different functional languages. For example, in Spanish the use of formal language and informal language, when addressing someone, changes in its form. You may say, ¿Viene Vd. conmigo? (formal language), instead of the informal use, ¿Vienes conmigo? Standard language or model language1 is a unitary language, that is, a functional language commonly accepted by all speakers of a speech community (=a language) as the correct one. It does not usually have dialectal variety, but it is determined diaphasically, since it is usually spoken in different styles of speech. To determine what a functional language is like, you have to say that a functional language is an ideal model used by speakers. As such it has virtual existence as idiomatic knowledge. The architecture of the language relates to the multiple techniques of speaking existing in a historic language, that is, to the different dialects, levels and styles of speech making up a historic language. In the different elements constituting the architecture of the language there is diversity. In the architecture of a language you can find analogous terms (signifiers) with different meanings (signified)2. For example, in American English when referring to the ground floor you’ll say the first floor. In the same way when referring to luggage you’ll say baggage. Similarly, to refer to a station where you can fill in petrol, you’ll say a gas station but a filling station or a petrol station in British English; to prepare the table for eating you will say to put the table in American English, but to lay the table in British English. That is, you have the same reality, but analogous signifiers and meanings. In the architecture of the language there are different techniques of speaking with different traditions and thus different norms of the language (cf. § 5.5.). That is, in the architecture of the language there

1 2

Coseriu 1992, p. 164. Coseriu 1981, pp. 120-121.

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are different functional languages. Historic languages thus constitute a set of functional languages. As a consequence, the different techniques of speaking in a historic language must be considered different languages. They must be dealt with and analysed separately.

5.3. The Structure of the Language Meaning, considering the variety of idiomatic knowledge, is only to be studied in structured in the functional language. The structure of the language thus is structured knowledge. The technique of speaking constitutes structured knowledge, the idiomatic knowledge of speakers (=linguistic competence, Sp. saber) in accordance with the conditions affecting language. Idiomatic knowledge as it is structured can be analysed in the different elements constituting it. The structure of the language consists in determining the elements making possible the internal equilibrium in the technique of speaking, that is, in achieving the only language able to function, the functional language. In the architecture of the language you can find variety of linguistic forms, that is, a thing or reality (signified) relates to different words (signifiers). In the structure of a language you can find opposition and solidarity between signifier and signified, that is, different signifiers may relate to one meaning (signified). For example, in English you can have the adjectives courteous; cultivated; cultured; genteel; polite; refined; wellbred; well-mannered to relate to one meaning. In this sense they oppose one another: every adjective has its exact meaning as opposing the meaning of the others. ‘Courteous’, although similar with the meaning of the others, opposes them all. But in their signification as a group, they oppose the following set of adjectives, barbaric; barbarous; boorish; ill-bred; savage; uncouth. And in a different manner they oppose as well clumsy; and in another one, they oppose, contemptible. At the same time all these adjectives are to be combined with nouns and expressions denoting human beings. You can say, he is 129

courteous/uncouth/clumsy/contemptible. That is, within the structure of a language you can find relationships of opposition and solidarity. The distinction between the architecture of the language and the structure of the language is particularly important in the study of meaning. Meaning can change depending on the words used in the different territories, levels of speech, and styles of speech.

5.4. A Technique of Speaking A technique of speaking is primarily to be understood as the performance of speech in a speech community, that is, as the usual or normal performances of a homogeneous set of procedures and linguistic units. This technique of speaking is independent as far as it has usually been performed. At the same time, it is objectively functional, that is, distinctive or oppositional. In this sense a technique of speaking is to be distinguished from speech. The technique of speaking underlies speech and thus is different from it. The individual performances of a language are to be separated from the technique of speaking, since the technique of speaking of a language is implicit in these individual performances, thus manifesting itself in individual performances1.

5.5. Aspects in the Structure of the Language With this you can separate different aspects in the activity of speaking in as much as it is structured knowledge within the functional language: 1. first, speech, the set of speech acts; 2. second, what is usual or, in other words, normal; 3. third, the technique in producing speech; 4. and fourth, what is systematic. From speech you can abstract, that is, extract, the technique of speaking, that is, idiomatic knowledge, which is usual and historic (=made in a speech community in history), and oppositional and functional (systematic).

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Coseriu 1992, p. 293.

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These distinctions and the separation of them in the technique of speaking and the individual performances of speaking (speech) can be made through a double operation of abstraction: 1) abstraction of the individuality, subjectivity, originality, and creativity of speaking subjects when speaking; and 2) abstraction of the variety of performance in a speech community. That is, the concept of the technique of speaking is nothing representing a concrete object. It is a concept got through abstraction. It has not concrete existence: it merely exists as virtual (since it is knowledge) in the speech of individuals1. In connection with this process of abstraction the technique of speaking can be structured at four levels: i. speech ii. the norm of the language iii. the system of the language iv. the type of the language2. Speech is the concrete performance of the technique of speaking, something given in the daily language use in the words of speakers. The norm of the language is the language already performed and constituted in a tradition in the technique of speaking3. It encompasses everything that, in the technique of speaking, not necessarily functional (=distinctive), is socially or traditionally fixed thus constituting common use in the speech community. The system of the language is a set of functional and distinctive oppositions, that is, a set of possibilities. It encompasses everything that, within the sphere of tradition, is at the same time traditional and objectively functional, that is, distinctive. And the type of the language is the set of oppositions and distinctions proper of a language, a set of tendencies to be found as proper and characteristic of a language4. The norm of the language relates to language as a social

1

Cf. Coseriu 1981, pp. 123-130. Coseriu 1992, p. 292. 3 Cf. Coseriu, 1981, p. 126. 4 Coseriu 1981, pp. 123-130; Coseriu1992, pp. 293-306. 2

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institution. The system of the language relates to the set of distinctive functions, that is, to oppositional structures. The norm of the language is a formalized set of traditional performances: it encompasses what has already been performed. The system of the language, on the contrary, is a set of possibilities of performance: it encompasses both what has already been performed and what has not yet been performed but it is virtually existent, that is possible. It can at any time be created in accordance with the functional rules of the language. And the type of the language is the set of tendencies in a language. It encompasses the types of functions, oppositions, and procedures, the types of functional categories, and principles of a technique of speaking manifesting themselves at the level of the system of the language1. The separation of the different levels in the structure of the language is fundamental to the description of language as far as it is spoken. To illustrate this distinction, let us analyse the following examples. Imagine the following pieces of speech Nobody knows what I went through waiting for the verdict. No one knows what I experienced when waiting for the verdict. I was unhappy and miserable waiting for the verdict. Nobody knows how anxious I was when I waited for the verdict. I was completely distressful and alone when waiting for the verdict. Here you have five individual performances of a speech act. They all are correct, coherent, and congruent. At the same time, they all are adequate, appropriate and opportune. They describe a situation affecting the speaker. If you analyse them, you can say that they constitute different performances of the activity of speaking. In themselves they constitute five speech acts thus belonging to speech. They represent the lowest level in the activity of speaking, since they are concrete acts of speaking.

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Coseriu 1992, p. 300.

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It you analyse them, you shall see that they all belong to the usual performances of the English language, that is, they belong to the norm of the language. You can see that there are many elements having been previously performed and thus common to all speakers of the speech community we call the English language. But if you have a closer look, you shall see that you can abstract, that is, separate, the different means of expression they are constituted with that may be valid for future performances. You can single out elements belonging to the semantic level: the use of words with their corresponding meanings, know, go through, wait, verdict; elements belonging to the morphologic level, the singular, the use of affixes to conjugate verbs, the use of determiners and prepositions, the use of phrasal verbs and verb + particle, etc. You can as well find elements belonging to the syntactic level, the word order, the arrangement of elements; etc. you can single out elements belonging to the phonetic level and elements arranged in such a way as to express the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. That is, in your analysis you select all those elements that, since they are usual and common thus belonging to the norm of the language, can be used as models to form new expressions. At the same time the elements found out in the sentences analysed, keep different relationships of opposition and solidarity. They keep relationships of opposition in words: some are nouns, some verbs, and some adjectives, some adverbs, some prepositions and some determiners; in the meanings expressed; in the combination of the elements, etc.; and relationships of solidarity: verbs, for example, request a semantic object to act as the syntactic subject or object of the sentence. This third analysis leads us to find out the functional and distinctive oppositions and solidarities in the different sentences, prompting us conclude that they all belong to the system of the language, the system of possibilities for future performances. Finally, you can speak of the type of the language, that is, the set of functional tendencies proper of this language thus distinguishing it from other languages. In the different examples you can find verb phrases (go through), no explicit expression of the subject with 133

gerunds (when waiting), or the tendency not to mark person distinction in verbs (verbal forms, went, experienced)1. A language can only be described and analysed as a functional language2. A functional language is the only language apt to be spoken. A functional language does not relate to a historic language or the totality of speech of a speaker. Functional description and structural description are given only in a functional language, since functional description relates to structured knowledge. Oppositions must be described in the functional language they belong to. 5. The Configuration of Linguistic Contents Meaning is present at all levels of idiomatic knowledge (=linguistic competence)3. Idiomatic knowledge or competence is the universal human activity that individuals as representative of traditions in the technique of speaking perform individually. The activity of speaking has a universal level, going beyond languages, having to do with speaking and the conditions of speaking. It has a historic level having to do with traditions in the activity of speaking, thus constituting techniques in the activity of speaking, that is, languages; and an individual level relating to the individual performances or executions, having do with the needs of expression of speakers4. When speakers speak they will always speak about things with the help of the means of expression of a language, thus creating new senses having to do with varied subjects and topics. Linguistic contents are structured in three levels as well. The first aspect of the configuration of linguistic contents is designation. It relates to the universal level of speaking. Designation

1

Description is to be made as many times as the terms studied are found in the different structures they are apt to constitute, cf. Coseriu 1981, pp. 118-123. 2 Coseriu 1992, p. 292. 3 Cf. Coseriu 1992, pp. 91-92. 4 Coseriu 1992, p. 74 and ff.

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is the connection established in linguistic expressions to real things. Designation is not the mere act of pointing at something when speaking but the meaningful relationship established with things in the real. Designation cannot be given but with language. The second aspect of the configuration of linguistic contents is meaning. It relates to the level of the activity of speaking, that is, to the configuration of facts of experience made with the language1. And finally, the third aspect of the configuration of linguistic content, sense, relates to the individual level of the activity of speaking, the kind of meaning created in every case, by every speaker with the help of meaning and designation and going beyond meaning and designation2. Meaning has to do with the linguistic description of contents. It is structured and belongs to a language. Designation belongs to the structuring of things in the real world made by the speaker when speaking. It has to do with the universal level of speaking. And sense belongs to the individual subject who speaks, not to the language. For example, Sp. traer, E. bring, Fr. apporter, It. apportare and G. bringen3 constitute different meanings. They can only be defined by means of the relationships of signification functioning as oppositions or solidarities in the languages they belong to. However, they can designate the same fact of experience under certain circumstances. Similarly, Sp. escalera, E. staircase, It. scala, and G. Treppe, can designate the same things, but they constitute different systematizations of experience, that is, different meanings. In the same sense, the fact that the dimension of length in two objects, A and B, is different from each other may be expressed in one language as “A is larger than B”, in another one as “A exceeds B”, and another one, simply as, “A is large, B is small”4. The examples of identical designation with different meanings are very

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Coseriu 1985a, 247; 1987, 206-208; and 1992, 96. Coseriu 1985a, p. 247. 3 Example by Coseriu 1985a, p. 220. 4 Examples by Coseriu 1985a, 221. 2

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numerous even within a language. The following expressions have the same designation (giving one's opinion) but different meanings: as I see it; in my opinion; personally I believe; personally I feel; it seems to me; I must say that...; don't you think that...; I’d just like to say....; from my point of view; as far as I’m concerned; to my mind; the way I see it...; from where I stand...; if you ask me...; I reckon...; what I reckon is....; I’d say...; I’m convinced that...; I consider...; I’m of the opinion....; it’s my opinion...; my own view of the matter is...; personally I consider...; I hold the opinion...; it’s my considered opinion that..; etc. Sense is the contents of a text or a textual unit in so far as these contents do not coincide with meaning and designation. The sense of the following syllogism, all human beings are mortal; Peter is a human being; thus, Peter is mortal1, can be interpreted in the following way: “if something is applied of a class, it will necessarily to be applied of all members of that class”. Peter in this case is not a mere semantic object but only a member of a class. It would mean the same if the subject was Mary or Andrew. In fact, this syllogism can have the sense of warning human beings of their mortal condition: remember that you shall die. In poetry this syllogism can be the symbol of human fragility. Questions, answers, the expression of wishes, likes, dislikes, feelings, demands, requests, offers, refusals, giving opinions, encouraging, persuading, complaining, threatening, greetings, etc., are sense categories and thus textual categories. The distinction of designation, meaning and sense manifests itself in the contents of an expression. They can be verified in a speech act. A speech act refers to things in the world, that is, it refers to extralinguistic states of affairs, either physical or mental, with idiomatic means of expression, thus conveying a particular textual function (designation). Meaning is the contents given in every case by the language (the tradition in the technique of speaking, or language as a 1

Example by Coseriu 1985a, 221.

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social institution) used in a speech act; and sense is the particular linguistic contents in a particular speech act meant by means of designation and meaning and beyond designation and meaning1.

Conclusion The same as with language, meaning is nothing but the creation by the individual speaker, who intends to say something coming to him from his inside, thus using words belonging to the speech community. Because of this meaning is all and at the same time creation, historic determination, and meaningful intentional purpose.

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Coseriu 1985s, 247.

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Chapter 6: Meaning, What Is It1 Jesus Martinez del Castillo Department of Philology, Faculty of Business Studies and Tourism, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain Abstract: Meaning as the original function of language is the arrangement of internal things on the part of the individual creative and historic subject who speaks a language. Meaning constitutes the series of contents making up the linguistic world human subjects can manage real things with. Real things are not described with meanings but merely represented and designated. Meanings represent the essence of things thus making them members of a class. In this sense, meaning is the base to create things in as much as they constitute entities. Only through the operation of determination can meanings designate individual real things. Since meaningful classes are intended to individual purposes, meaning is intentional and inclusive. Keywords: Arrangement of Things, Designation, Determination, Real Things, Intentional Meaning, Linguistic Categories

1. Introduction

So far in the previous chapter we studied the role of meaning in language. We analysed 1. the use of language as an instrument of expression and concluded about the precedence of language and thus meaning over the instrumental use of language. Language and meaning are thus autonomous;

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Jesús Martinez del Castillo. Meaning What is It. International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Special Issue: Linguistics of Saying. Vol. X, No. X, 2015, pp. 6776. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.s.2015030601.19

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2. the linguistic expression in speech and we concluded that a linguistic expression could either mean or connote. Only meaning is structured, not connotation; 3. speech acts and saw that speech acts represent the act of creation of language by individuals because speech acts are the execution of an intuition on the part of the speaker1. It is in speech acts that you can start with the analysis of meaning. But meaning does not belong to speech but to a language, since it is common and inter-individual; 4. language as a technique in the activity of speaking. Language represents a set of traditional techniques in accordance with the meanings of a language are to be defined. In this sense, we studied language as the activity of speaking, not uniform by varied; 5. the configuration of the activity of speaking. We concluded about the importance of the functional language and the structure in it. To study any element in language (meaning included) it is necessary to determine the different levels it involves in terms of the structure of the language; and 6. the configuration of linguistic contents. Linguistic contents are structured as well in three levels, designation (universal), meaning (historic) and sense (individual). In other words: we studied the basic tenets to be born in mind when dealing with meaning. And now it is the time to ask for meaning, What’s meaning? 2. Defining Characteristics of Meaning

To define meaning bearing in mind that meaning is the internal function of language2, three important defining aspects of language must be born in mind:

1 2

Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 75; Coseriu, 1986a, pp. 27-32. Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 46; Cf. Martínez del Castillo, 2015.

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1. language has meaning: you would rather say that language is meaning; 2. language is intentional, that is, you can either speak or keep silent, speak in this or that way, always freely and in accordance with your purposes and intention; 3. language always manifests itself as a language, that is, in the form of historic traditions in the techniques of speaking. In this sense language divides humankind in different historic communities, just determined as linguistic communities or speech communities (=languages)1. These three aspects of language must be analysed separately.

2.1. Language is Meaning, the Conscience of Speakers The problem of the definition of meaning is to be analysed in linguistic expressions. It is usually said that language is expression. But expression when applied to language cannot be understood as the simple, immediate, and naturally necessary manifestation of language. The expression of language is the expression of objectified meaning. Immediate expressions, purely exclamatory reactions exist in humans, but they can never bear meaning. They are to be interpreted in the context they are the sign of. For example, you can infer the presence of someone producing a noise out of the very noise. You can infer that there is somebody in the room upstairs if you hear a noise like the one people make when they step around. But such a noise, if considered an expression, cannot be considered language, just because it has no objectified meaning. That noise merely conveys the presence of someone making that noise, not the function played by someone in the act of making such a noise. The interpretation of that fact consists in the inference from the proved existence of the noise to the verification of the presence of somebody, given in the real context of that noise. That is, you deduce the presence of somebody based on the real

1

Coseriu 1985a, pp. 36 and ff.

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existence of the noise, although you have not verified the connection of both factors (the noise and somebody being upstairs). On the contrary, the interpretation of linguistic expressions consists in the inference from a proved existence of an expression (the one in its concrete elements) to an essentially different domain, the conscience of speakers. In principle, speakers in themselves have little to do with that concrete expression. The verification is referred to the conscience of the speaker. If a speaker does not know the meaning of a means of expression he will not understand the contents of it. The connection between the conscience of speakers and linguistic expressions, that is, signs and knowledge, is usually said to be arbitrary. But arbitrary here is to be interpreted as end-directed and historically motivated1. Hence the fact that materially identical expressions (or very similar expressions) can convey quite different meanings depending on the language (=the system of signification) in accordance with they are to be interpreted. And even within a language the material similarity of expressions does not relate to the similarity of meanings. For example, the material similarity of words such as pair - pear does not guarantee the similarity of meanings. In the same way peace – piece, or in a bit different way sniff, snuff, snub, snug. On the contrary, house and home; dog and hound; young and new, denote similar contents but they are materially different.

1 The concept of arbitrariness by Saussure must be revised in terms of the historically determined condition of linguistic signs. Arbitrary means not necessary but motivated only because of language use, that is, because of the intentional purpose to mean something historically determined (cf. Coseriu 1988, p. 24, footnote 38; Coseriu 1985a, pp. 37-38).

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On the other hand, a linguistic expression can have different interpretations. The following example, taken from the written press, at the time, President Bush swore in his cabinet can have two interpretations: “President Bush made the members of his cabinet solemnly promise to fulfil and accept the duties inherent to their jobs”; and “President Bush uttered blasphemous words before the members of his cabinet”. In either case there is no direct connection between the elements used in the expression and the interpretation of them. The only relationship to be found between them is in the conscience of speakers, namely, the creative knowledge of speakers and, in a greater or lesser degree, the previous knowledge and the command (knowledge) of the technique used in the expression. In comparison with the interpretation made on the noise coming from the room upstairs, the difference consists in the base of the inference. The connection between the noise produced and the agent producing it constitutes the base of the inference. It is thus a direct connection. In the case of linguistic expressions and the contents in them the base for the inference is not direct but in the conscience of speakers. For the interpretation of linguistic expressions, it is necessary to start with the elements in the expression and refer them to the conscience of speakers. The fact that similar expressions do not involve similar meanings, and vice versa, that similar meanings are not expressed with similar means of expression represents the radical separation of the world of meanings from the world of signs and symptoms1. This fact leads us to conclude about the nature of language: language is the creation of meanings and the creation of expressions to be used pragmatically by speakers when acting in the world2.

1 Coseriu 1985a, pp. 37-38. 2 Coseriu 1985a, p. 46.

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The most direct consequence of this is that language is not expression with meaning as it is usually said but meaning with expression. In language it is meaning but not expression the determining thing. Expression certainly exists but in terms of meaning. Meaning is the purpose, aim or function of language, whereas expression is valid as far as it is an instrument of the purpose, aim or function of language. Expression is the instrument of meaning. Hence that the instrument, that is, expression, can be any type whatsoever. In this sense you would rather say that language is meaning with expression but not the other way around1. The most important external function of language is communication. Many semanticists think that there is an intrinsic connection between communication and meaning. In communication you must distinguish two types: 1. the transmission of something to someone. This type of communication belongs to the settings of the application of language to practical things, that is, language used as an instrument; and 2. communication with someone. This is the prerequisite or essential condition of any speech act2. Communication as the transmission of something to someone cannot define meaning because meaning is to be transmitted by means of an act of communication, that is, meaning is prior to the act of communication. In effect, when a speaker intends to communicate something to someone he has already decided what to say, something different from the act of communication. When communication fails —and in fact sometimes does— language and thus meaning is still language and meaning. Meaning and language constitute conditions for communication to be. On the contrary, communication with someone is essential to language thus making language a language. In this sense language is

1 Coseriu,1985a, p. 38. 2 Coseriu 1988, pp. 77-78.

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different from poetry, that is, language is not absolute but contingent, always intended to someone, even as a primary linguistic creation. Meanings and signs are not created for their own sake (as art and poetry). Meaning and signs are created for others, that is, they are created in a language, aiming at another speaker in a circumstance. This means that language and meaning are historic, that is, made in a speech community and thus in history. Meanings thus exist before a speaker contacts with another one, just because they have something in common1 (the previous knowledge). Therefore, communication cannot define meaning. Meaning is the internal determination of language so that language is defined with meaning2. Communication as the transmission of something is important in language use, but meaning is not only important to language but also essential3. Meaning is indispensable for language to be since language exists as the creation of meanings. The fundamental principle in communication is that communication exists as far as the contents in the source coincide with the contents in the receiver. The failure in communication does not alter the interpretation due to the speech act.

2.2. Free Intentional Creations of Meanings Meaning is the arrangement of human experience. The arrangement of things by language does not involve delimitations, divisions, indications, or landmarks prior to language. That is, linguistic arrangement of things does not follow previous experience. This means that the linguistic arrangement of human experience is not necessary but contingent and thus intentional. The arrangement of human experience is the one you have in the different languages but there could be different ones. In fact, the many languages in the

1 Referring to Heidegger, Coseriu says “communication exists because both speaker and listener have already something in common manifesting in speaking to one another” (Coseriu, 1985a, p. 31; my translation). 2 Cf. Coseriu 1985ª, p. 38. 3 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 39.

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world make different arrangements or delimitations of facts of experience. In this sense languages cannot be conceived as different nomenclatures, materially diverse for things already given. They constitute different webs of meanings systematizing the world of experience in a different way in every case. This means that language is not proof or verification of things in the world, but imposition of limits or boundaries on the things experienced1. A language is an arrangement of facts of experience so that speakers of a language believe that their ideas about the world are universal. Consider the words by Benjamin L. Whorf (1897-1941) describing a language without the concepts of space and time: The Hopi language […] contains no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time”, or to past, present, or future, or to enduring or lasting, or to motion as kinematic rather than dynamic (i.e. as a continuous translation in space and time rather than as an exhibition of dynamic effort in a certain process), or that even refer to space in such a way as to exclude that element of extension or existence that we call “time”, and so by implication leave a residue that could be referred to as “time”. Hence, the Hopi language contains no reference to “time”, either explicit or implicit2.

In fact, the Hopi language, in a similar way with English or Spanish, imposes certain views on its speakers in accordance with they think and act in the way they think things are. This does not mean that linguistic arrangements or systematizations cannot follow natural physically objective limits or boundaries in the things in the world. In language there is no objectively compulsory reason to follow those limits. In meaning there are some objective criteria but meaning does not necessarily relate to objectively delimited boundaries3. There is no imperative reason in English to separate the facts of experience,

1 Coseriu 1985a, p. 39. 2 Whorf 1956, pp. 57-58. 3 Coseriu 1985a, pp. 39-40.

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flesh and meat; morrow, morning, noon, afternoon, evening or to apply differently, young and new; or produce and yield; or to distinguish between stairs/staircase and ladder; and so on. Properly and primarily, meaning does not arrange external things but internal. Facts of experience are conceived as something already known, thus constituting contents of conscience. To this respect Aristotle says that words are σύµβολα τών εν τή ψυχή παθηµάτων1 [symbols of things experienced in the soul (=the mind)].

External stimuli can be very helpful, say the percept of a tree, but the word ‘tree’ does not refer to that percept, but to tree as something intuited by speakers as contents of conscience. In this sense in language there is no distinction between internal and external objects. Objects of imagination are conceived in just the same way as the objects perceived through sensitive perception. Siren2, centaur3, has the same objective base as degree, measure, meter, and the same as donkey, cat, or dog. In this sense, the existence of names is not a proof of the existence of the things or objects they denote. On the other hand, meaning in its primary absolute nomination is to a certain extent subjective: it is the objectification of subjective contents of conscience. The complete objectivity of meaning cannot be reached but through the simultaneous inter-subjectivity of all acts of naming, that is, through the essential and original historicity of language4. The meaning of ‘tree’ is only objective as far as it is the contents of conscience of the speakers of a speech community, that is, as far

1 Apud Coseriu 1985a, p. 40. 2 A woman-like creature, whose singing attracted sailors and caused the wreck of their ships. 3 One of a race of animals said to be half a man and half a horse. 4 Coseriu 1985a, p. 40.

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as it is common and historic thus belonging to a language1. 2.3.

Universality of Human Experience: Meaning vs. Designation Meaning as such does not relate to things as entities but to the being of things, that is to the universal human experience. In other words: language does not deal with individual experience but the infinite possibility of experience2. For example, the word ‘tree’ means “being a tree”, that is, the infinite possibility of “being a tree”. In this way the word ‘tree’ can be applied to existing trees as well as to trees no longer existing or trees to exist in future, imaginary trees, or even non-existing trees. The word ‘tree’ is to be applied only to an internal experience, since the real experience does not admit that application. Hence that designation of things in language is something secondary and conditioned: designation is merely a possibility that can only be created through meaning. In this sense meaning can be defined as the possibility or virtuosity3 of designation4. Words can certainly designate individual things as well. But this designation is only possible through universal signification and only by means of individualization through an act of determination. In the same way personal pronouns and demonstratives are universal in the meaning they convey, but only through the determination made by the situation of speaking can they designate individual entities. Proper names, on the other hand, are secondary elements in language, since they need an operation of historic individualization, not simply an occasional individualization. Designation and meaning are thus two linguistic functions

1 Apud Coseriu 1985a, p. 40. 2 Coseriu 1985a, p. 41. 3 In a theory of knowledge, something is virtual when the extent of a meaning involves all possible, probable, existing, non-existing or imaginary items to be referred to. 4 Coseriu 1985a, 41.

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completely different from each other. Meaning is formal; designation is objective. Linguistic contents are made up of both functions1. Designation on the other hand can be real or imaginary. There are many things called tree to be referred to as tree, but a siren has never existed and has been referred to as a siren. 3. Corollary 3.1. Language Created the World

The three aspects characteristic of meaning analysed here (the fact that language primarily means so that similar expressions do not involve similar meanings, § 2.1.; the arrangement of human experience, § 2.2.; and the infinite possibility of experience, § 2.3.), make possible for language to be overcome and, as a consequence, to operate even on things in the world in a particular and peculiar way, the one created and structured with language. The delimitation of things with language is no obstacle to manipulate the world. In fact, language is the access to things. Language as far as it is meaning makes possible speaking assertively thus dealing with things and making possible science. Science starts with the thing apprehended and delimited by means of language. Science does not deal with anything linguistic but extra-linguistic2. Meaning is just the possibility of designation. Language can be made into a system of designation. Science consists in a system in which designation and meaning coincide. Nouns in science are previously determined for individual designations or classes objectively delimited. In this sense, we can say that language created the world. But this statement must be interpreted as the only world existing for speakers, even if they are scientists and want to study the real. Real things exist just as they are structured, delimited and created with language, both in the contents they are designated with and the part of reality they designate. A chair, for example, is a real

1

Coseriu 1985a, 41. 2 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, pp. 41-42.

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object as far as it has been conceived, delimited, and created in the contents and designation of it, fabricated with language. And the same can be said of a rat in Spanish, una rata, in the feminine gender, although in fact there are males and females in the species. And the same can be said of freedom: who can ever say that they have seen or touched freedom? However, you can say that they lived or experienced freedom.

3.2. Language is the Basis for Science to Be The delimitation of things by means of language is no obstacle to manage things. In fact, language is the access to real things1. In effect, language makes possible for you to speak assertively, something having to do with real things and the truth of things, thus constituting the starting point of science. Science is possible only with things previously apprehended and delimited by means of language. But science however has no connection with meanings but things, although by means of language, that is, by means of designation. Science does not deal with meanings but designation2 and even this designation is given by means of meanings. The arrangement of things by means of language is not performed in the world of things, but at the level of human apprehension, that is, in connection with the world of things. Language prepares things for science thus making the primary delimitation of things necessary for things to be3.

3.3. Language is the Possibility of Knowledge The arrangement of the world by means of language is not a limitation but the possibility of knowledge of the world: every language is the base and the instrument of objective knowledge. The arrangement of things with language constitutes a world of meanings, not affecting the things referred to, but making them appear as arranged. This arrangement is not executed in the outer

1 Coseriu 1985a, p. 41. 2 See the difference between designation, meaning and sense, Coseriu 1985a, p. 53, footnote 4; Coseriu 1985a, p. 247. 3 Cf. Coseriu 1985a, p. 42.

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world of things but at the level of human apprehension; that is, it is executed in the sphere of the human conscience although in connection with the world of things. Language prepares things for science. Language gives things a preliminary and necessary delimitation. But this preliminary and necessary delimitation is overcome by science. This overcoming is made through language in models offered by languages1. As a matter of facts, science starts with an arbitrary linguistic arrangement of the world making it into an objectively motivated arrangement, thus constituting a possibility of language: in principle a linguistic arrangement can be any whatever. Amongst the many possibilities of language, one of them is language objectively motivated, that is, language as far as it is used only for establishing and accepting delimitations relating to a real classification of things in the world and to limits objectively motivated and evaluated. In this sense scientific language, a technical language, as one of the many possibilities of language, is executed only partially in historic languages, namely, in a nomenclature or terminology2. For example, in English, when you speak of the ear in medical terms, you have a whole range of words to be used as far as they refer to things objectively motivated, that is, defined scientifically. You have cochlea, Eustachian tube, stirrup, anvil, semi-circular canals, auditory nerve, hammer, auricle, thus constituting a nomenclature. In a nomenclature the language is executed only partially since the words identify with things denoted, that is, the contents and designation in words of a nomenclature are the same thing. There is no meaning or systematization on the part of language in them. The distinction between existent and non-existent depends on language. The problem about the existence of things is only possible in any case thanks to meaning. In connection with meaning you can ask whether this or that meaning relates to the essence denoted, or if this or that meaning can be verified in the

1 Coseriu 1985a, p. 42. 2 Coseriu 1985a, p. 43; Coseriu 1981, p. 96.

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real world. Consequently the identification of meaning and real objects is a mistake. Language does not deal with existence or nonexistence. Language merely gives the possibility of asking for the existence and thus of arranging a conventional technical language with only names for things existing1. For example, formerly feathers of hens, cocks and turkeys were used as instruments for writing. In Spanish the word for feather was used as the word denoting both the instrument for writing and the feathers of birds. Later, an artificial instrument for writing was invented and the word ‘pluma’ was definitely assigned to it. From that moment on the instrument for writing is an independent existing thing. That is, language with the word ‘pluma’ made possible the existence of the new instrument. Since meaning is the possibility of designation, a language can be made into a system of designation, thus made into a technical language. In science meaning and designation coincide2. In language meanings primarily designate classes of things, not individual things. They can as well designate individual things but only through the operation of determination with the help of contexts and situations. For example, flower, cat, roof, house, designate classes of things. They can be applied to individual things only theoretically thus denoting only the essence of those classes of things. In themselves these classes do not designate things. The designation of things is possible with certain means of expression existing in some languages, namely, determiners. For example, the following expressions this flower; the cat on the roof; the house next doors, designate real things. In languages with no determiners determination is made by means of contexts and situations. At the same time linguistic classes are usually inclusive, that is, a word 1 Coseriu 1985a, p. 43. 2 Coseriu 1985a, 43; Coseriu 1981, p. 98.

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can designate a class of semantic objects and a lower or upper class of objects1. For example, if you say, I'll stay in this hotel for three more days you mean both three days and three nights, that is, day means the class “day” and its opposite or lower class “night”. In linguistic oppositions a term, say A, can mean A and non-A. In a technical language, this is not possible. In this sense a scientific language is a special use of language2. But this does not mean that language is a phase in science. Science uses language, but studies and analyses things designated as such objects designated. In this sense statements in science are statements about real things. On the contrary: language does not give any information about real things: it merely informs about the way to represent them3. Linguistic arrangements of real things constitute knowledge, but merely the first manifestation of knowledge, a distinguishing kind of knowledge in which something is apprehended as identical with itself (that is, uniform) and different from the others4. Meaning is λόγος in the etymological sense of this word, that is, meaning is selection of a mode of being and thus representation of being but not a statement about things5. In this sense language is not true or false, as Aristotle pointed out. Language does not involve analysis and recomposition of the being of things. Language simply stands for (that is, represents) the being of things apprehended. Words are intuitive delimitations of things not motivated definitions of things. Even compound words, relating to definitions of things, that is, to statements about things, cannot be considered statements about things6. In this sense a walnut is not a foreign nut (