Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: 1.1. The structure of natural languages as studied by linguists is connected in several ways with phenomena outside this domain. Problems of this kind are, to mention only three: (a) the acoustical and physiological interpretation of the primitive ele ments in which the sound structure is represented; (b) the conceptual or referential interpretation of the primitive elements that build up the meanings of the utterances; (c) the structural relationships that go beyond the single sentences, usually taken as the largest units to be analyzed linguistically, i.e., the question as to the conditions that two or more sentences must meet in order to form a connected text. (This problem is not to be confused with the conditions for actually using a sentence, i.e., speech performance.') Only the first of these topics has been studied to a certain extent; very little is known about the last two. In the following we will be concerned with the second problem, viz. the relationship between language structure and certain aspects of concept formation or structure of thought, as it were. This problem is in a certain sense parallel to the first one: it demands an inter pretation and motivation of the primitive terms that enter into the descrip tion of given languages.
Author: Manfred Bierwisch
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2139714201