Does semantics need reality?

Does semantics need reality? Peter Gärdenfors Lund University Cognitive Science Kungshuset, S-222 22 Lund, Sweden E-mail: [email protected]

1. FOUR QUESTIONS FOR A THEORY OF SEMANTICS There are four basic questions a theory of semantics should be able to answer: (1) What are meanings?

(the ontological question)

(2) What is the relation between linguistic expressions and their meanings? (the semantic question) (3) How can the meanings of linguistic expressions be learned? (the epistemological question) (4) What is the relation between individual speakers and their communal language? (the communicative question) Within philosophy of language, one can find two fundamentally different answers to the ontological question, one realistic and one cognitive (or conceptualistic). According to the realistic approach to semantics the meaning of a word or expression is something out there in the world. According to the cognitivistic answer, meanings are mental entities. Thus the two approaches give contrary answers to the question of whether semantics needs reality. This article will analyse how some semantic theories answer the four fundamental questions. Depending on which answer one chooses for the ontological question, the answers to the semantic, epistemological and communicative questions will be radically different. In the following section, I will outline the different answers to the semantic questions. The cognitivistic approach will be elaborated in section 3 by a discussion of the representational capacities of signals and symbols. In section 4, it will also be compared to the “constructivist” semantics presented by von Glasersfeld. Then the epistemological question will be addressed in section 5. The communicative question and some related issues will be treated in sections 6 and 7.

2. THE SEMANTIC QUESTION Realistic semantics comes in two flavors: extensional and intensional. In the extensional type of semantics, one starts out from a language L, which may or may not be defined in formal terms, and maps the constituents of L onto a “world.” Names are mapped onto objects, predicates are mapped onto sets of objects or relations between objects, etc. By compositions of these mappings sentences end up being mapped onto truth values. The main objective of this kind of semantics is to determine truth conditions for the sentences in L. A consequence of this approach is that the meaning of an expression is independent of how individual users understand it. The first developed theory 1

of this type is Frege's semantics, but it acquires a more precise form in Tarski's theory of truth. Schematically, the mappings can be illustrated as follows:

Figure 1: The ontology of extensional semantics The extensional theory of reference implicit in this kind of semantics was soon found to be wanting as account of several phenomena in natural languages. In order to handle some of these problems, so called intensional semantics was developed by logicians and linguists. In this brand of semantics, the language L is mapped onto a set of possible worlds instead of only a single world. Still, the goal of the semantics is to provide truth conditions for the sentences in L. The meaning of a sentence is taken to be a proposition, which is identified with a set of possible worlds – the set of worlds where the sentence is true. The classic form of this semantics is Kripke's (1959) semantics for modal logics. With respect to natural languages, intensional semantics reaches its peak in Montague's (1974) work. Using the same style as above, this kind of semantics can be illustrated as in figure 2.

Possible worlds Truth Language

Figure 2: The ontology of intensional semantics As an alternative to possible worlds semantics, situation semantics was developed during the 1980’s (Barwise and Perry 1983). Instead of mapping the language elements onto a set of possible worlds, they were related to “situations.” Situations are partial descriptions of the world. Thus situation semantics is also a branch of realistic semantics. The general structure is illustrated in figure 3.

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World

Truth Language

Situation

Figure 3: The ontology of situation semantics Let us next turn to the cognitivistic approach to the semantic question. The core idea is that meanings of linguistic expressions are mental entities. A semantics is seen as a mapping from the expressions to cognitive structures. Language itself is seen as part of the cognitive structure, and not an entity with independent standing. I will distinguish between two kinds of cognitivistic answers. One is the area that has become known as cognitive semantics. The other is radical constructivism that will be treated in the section 4. Prime examples of works in the cognitive semantics tradition are Lakoff's (1987) and Langacker's (1986) books. Related versions of cognitive semantics can be found in the writings of Jackendoff (1983, 1990), Johnson-Laird (1983), Fauconnier (1985), Talmy (1988), Sweetser (1990) and many others. There is also a French semiotic tradition, exemplified by Desclés (1985) and Petitot-Cocorda (1985), which shares many features with the American (mainly Californian) group. Within cognitive semantics the emphasis is on lexical meaning rather than on the meaning of sentences. Thus most of the analyses concern relations betweens words and representations of concepts, for example the “image schemas” developed by Langacker (1986), Lakoff (1987) and Talmy (1988). In addition, the truth of sentences is not the most important feature, but is replaced with considerations about acceptance or belief. The external world and truth conditions enter on the scene only when the relation between the world and the cognitive structure is considered. Interestingly enough, one finds a very similar theory in Aristotle's De Interpretatione. The following is an excerpt from the first paragraph of E. M. Edghill's translation: “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.”

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Aristotle makes a distinction between “mental experiences” and the “things” of which the experiences are “images.” Furthermore, spoken or written words refer to the mental experiences, and not to the external reality. The framework of cognitive semantics can be illustrated in the following schematic way:

Language Meaning

Truth

World

Conceptual structure

Figure 4: The components of cognitive semantics A consequence of the cognitivist position that puts it in conflict with many other semantic theories is that no form of truth conditions of an expression is necessary to determine its meaning. The truth of expressions is considered to be secondary since truth concerns the relation between a cognitive structure and the world. To put it tersely: Meaning comes before truth. Since the cognitive structures in our heads are connected to our perceptual mechanisms, directly or indirectly, it follows that meanings are, at least partly, perceptually grounded. This, again, is in contrast to traditional realistic versions of semantics which claim that since meaning is a mapping between the language and the external world (or several worlds), meaning has nothing to do with perception. A consequence of this is also that language and semantics is not seen as separated from other forms of cognition, but interacts with percption, memory, concept formation, etc. This position goes against “modular” theories of language like those of Chomsky and Fodor. Considered as a theory about the meaning of linguistic expressions, however, cognitive semantics is still rather undeveloped. Its most detailed applications have been areas where language is tightly connected to perception, as for example in spatial prepositions. Cognitive semantics has also offered new insights in the mechanisms of metaphors. Its strength lies mainly in the analysis of lexical items, even though there are interesting attempts to explain syntactic features by cognitive means (e.g., Langacker 1986, Holmqvist 1993, 1994, to appear). However, there are areas where traditional semantics is strongly developed and where cognitive semantics is still weak, for example, in analyses of negation and quantifiers.1 It is interesting to note that if de Saussure (1966) is read properly, he proposes a cognitive analysis of the signification relation. In contrast to mainstream contemporary philosophical semantics, he maintains that “la signifié” is a 1However, for a cognitively oriented analysis of quantifiers, see Moxey and Sanford (1993).

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mental entity. The following excerpt from the first paragraph of the first chapter illustrates this: “[F]or some people a language, reduced to its essentials, is a nomenclature: a list of terms corresponding to a list of things. […] This conception is open to a number of objections. It assumes that ideas already exist independently of words […]. It does not clarify whether the name is a vocal or psychological entity […]. Furthermore, it leads one to assume that the link between a name and a thing is something quite unproblematic, which is far from being the case. None the less, this naive view contains one element of truth, which is that linguistic units are dual in nature, comprising two elements. […] the two elements involved in the linguistic sign are both psychological and are connected in the brain by an associative link. This is a point of major importance. A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern.”

3. SIGNALS VS. SYMBOLS The crucial element of a cognitive semantics is the conceptual structure where the meanings reside. This conceptual structure is supposed to be a mental representation. But can any mental representation whatsoever serve as the basis for linguistic meaning? The first thing to notice is that there are different kinds of mental representations. In Gärdenfors (1995), I distinguish cued and detached representations. A cued representation stands for something that is present in the current external situation of the representing organism. When, for example, a particular object is categorized as food, an animal will act differently than if the same object had been categorized as a potential mate. In general, the represented object need not be actually present in the actual situation, but it must have been triggered by something in a recent situation. Delayed responses, in the behaviorist's sense, are thus based on cued representations. I am not assuming that the animal is, in any sense, aware of the representation, only that there is some generalizing factor that determines its behavior. In contrast, detached representations may stand for objects or events that are neither present in the current situation nor triggered by some recent situation. A memory of something, that can be evoked independently of the context where the memory was created, would be an example of a detached representation. Other examples of detached representations are the “spatial maps” that were introduced by Tolman (1948) in order to explain the behavior of rats in different kinds of mazes.2 A closely related notion is von Glasersfeld’s (1995) “re-presentation.” For him a re-presentation of an object is “a visualized image of the object, when the relevant sensory material is not actually available” (1995, p. 59). He ties this notion to the stage of “deferred imitation” in Piaget’s theory of child development. For von Glasersfeld, the hyphen in the word “re-presentation” is essential 2See Balkenius (1995) for an account of how the mechanisms of detached representations may arise as an extension of reactive behavior and various forms of learning.

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“because Piaget uses the word in a sense that is very different from that intended by contemporary philosophers. For Piaget, re-presentation is always the replay, or re-construction from memory, of a past experience and not a picture a picture of something else, let alone a picture of the real world.” (1995, p. 59) However, I don't claim that a sharp distinction between cued and detached representations can be maintained. It would perhaps be better to talk about degrees of detachment. For example, even the capacity for representing object permanence (in Piaget's sense) involves some level of detachment. A cat can, for example, predict that a mouse will appear at the other side of a curtain when it disappears on one side. It can “infer” information about the mouse even if there is no immediate sensory information, like when it is waiting outside a mouse-hole. In this sense it has a detached representation of a mouse that is, at least to some extent, independent of the information that is provided by the senses. The role of detached representations in the mental world of an organism can be explained by relating it to an idea introduced by Craik (1943, p. 61): “If the organism carries a “small-scale model” of external reality and of its own possible actions within its head, it is able to try out various alternatives, conclude which are the best of them, react to future situations before they arise, utilize the knowledge of past events in dealing with the present and future, and in every way to react on a much fuller, safer and more competent manner to the emergencies which face it.” Under the heading of the inner environment this kind of “small-scale model” has been made popular by Dennett:3 “the inner environment is simply any internal region that can affect and be affected by features of potential behavioral control systems” (1978, p. 79). Such an environment is necessary for representing objects (like food and predators), places (where food or shelter can be found), actions (and their consequences), etc., even when these things are not perceptually present. The evolution of this kind of representation will clearly increase the fitness values of the animal. As a tentative definition, the inner environment of an organism will be identified as the collection of all detached representations of the organism. Loosely speaking, the inner environment consists of all things the organism can actively “think” about. The existence of an inner environment is necessary for many higher cognitive functions like planning, deception, and self-awareness (Whiten and Byrne 1988, Dennett 1991, Gulz 1991, Gärdenfors 1996). A special case is when an organism in its inner environment represents the inner environment of another individual. This results in what has been called a “theory of mind” (Gopnik 1993, Gergely 1994). The inner environment is also a sine qua non for language. In order to make this clear, I will introduce a way of distinguishing between signals and symbols. Both signals and symbols are tools of communication. The fundamental difference between them is that the reference of a symbol is a detached representation, while a signal refers to a cued representation. In other words, a signal 3However, Dennett does not refer to Craik. For a related, more constructivist idea, see Sjölander (1993).

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refers to something in the outer environment, while a symbol refers to the inner environment. This distinction is difficult to formulate for any of the realistic versions of semantics. A similar characterization can be found in von Glasersfeld (1977, pp. 63-65), who traces the idea back to Langer (1948). She clearly distinguishes symbols from signals: “A term which is used symbolically and not signally does not evoke action appropriate to the presence of its object. [...] Symbols are not proxy for their objects, but are vehicles for the conception of objects. To conceive a thing or a situation is not the same as to “react toward it” overtly, or to be aware of its presence. In talking about things we have conceptions of them, not the things themselves; and it is the conceptions, not the things, that symbols directly “mean.” Behavior toward conceptions is what words normally evoke: this is the typical process of thinking.” (Langer 1948, p. 61) With few exceptions, linguistic communication is achieved with the aid of symbols. Sjölander (1993, pp. 5-6) explains elegantly what is missing in animal communication: “The predominant function of language is to communicate about that which is not here and not now. A dog can 'say': I am angry, I want water, I want to go out, I like you, etc. But it has no communicative means enabling it to 'say': I was angry yesterday, nor can it 'say': I will be angry if you lock me up tonight again, and I will chew up the carpet. Likewise, the dog can 'say': There is a rat here! but it cannot 'say': There is a rat in the next room. […] Clearly, if you live in the present, communicating mainly about how you feel and what you want to do in the moment, the biological signals inherent in each species are sufficient. A language is needed only to communicate your internal representation of what could be, what has been, and of those things and happenings that are not present in the vicinity.” The idea that symbols refer to detached representations is not quite the same as Hockett's (1960) notion of “displacement” which is one of the criteria he uses to characterize language. Hockett's notion is too weak as is clear from the following: “Any delay between the reception of a stimulus and the appearance of the response means that the former has been coded into a stable spatial array, which endures at least until it is read off in the response” (Hockett 1960, p. 417). This phrase has a clear behaviorist ring to it and any signal that occurs at a different place or time would count as displaced according to Hockett's criterion. Von Glasersfeld (1977, p. 64), makes the point as follows: “But language allows us to talk not only about things that are spatially or temporally remote, but also about things that have no location in space and never happen at all. The very fact that we can make understandable linguistic statements about space and time, right and wrong, Humptydumpty, and the square root of minus one demonstrates rather incontrovertibly that language can deal with items that have nothing to do with “observable stimuli” or with the “referents” of the traditional theory of reference in linguistic philosophy.” The upshot is that the inner environment forms the boundaries of the conceptual structure that is needed to define a cognitivistic semantics. In other words, the 7

detached representations are the objects onto which the linguistics expressions are mapped. As a side remark, following Peirce's (1932) trichotomy of signals (which he calls indices), icons, and symbols, the role of icons can be characterized as follows. Like symbols, icons refer to detached representations, but unlike symbols, the choice of representation is not arbitrary. On the contrary, an icon in some aspects resembles the thing it represents. Barber and Peters (1992, p. 315) write: “An icon can be interpreted without previous agreement, through general knowledge of the world, and an index [i.e., a signal] through either knowledge of the world or pre-wired instinct. But an arbitrary symbol can only be interpreted through the direct process of agreeing on a convention and then learning it. That is, some preliminary mode of communication is needed to begin making the conventional agreements that underlie arbitrary systems. Icons and indices can serve this bootstrapping function because they can exist without conventional agreement. Thus spoken communication, like writing and sign, had to have begun iconically and/or indexically, and gradually shifted to arbitrariness.”

4. VON GLASERSFELD’S CONSTRUCTIVIST SEMANTICS An outline of a constructivist semantics can be found in von Glasersfeld (1995, chapter 7). At large, his theory seems compatible with the cognitive semantics described above. For example, he says: “As a rule, the use of language is purposive. […] On the whole people speak with a specific intention. […] In all these cases, the speakers have the re-presentation of a more or less detailed conceptual structure in their head. […] The process of associating words with sensorimotor experiences and the concepts abstracted from those experiences, is a subjective affair. Communication, therefore, is not a straightforward exchange of fixed meanings.” (von Glasersfeld, 1995, p. 129) He also starts out from de Saussures coupling between a “concept” and a “sound-image” in the linguistic sign. To this distinction he adds a third component, namely that of a “re-presentation.” As mentioned above, by this he means essentially the same as “detached representation.” The core of his semantic theory can depicted as follows (extracted from the the figure 7.2 on p. 131 in von Glasersfeld (1995)):

ASSOCIATION CONCEPT

SOUND-IMAGE

Re-presentation

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Figure 5. The components of von Glasersfeld’s “constructivist” semantics Like in cognitive semantics, all the components in this structure are of a conceptual nature. Von Glasersfeld (1995, p. 132) motivates the addition of “representations” to the two components of the Saussurian sign as follows: “In my view this addition is essential, because the ability to call up re-presentations in listeners or readers is what gives language its enormous power and differentiates it from all forms of signalling.” A problem with this description is that de Saussure’s notion of “concept” certainly would cover also von Glasersfeld’s “re-presentations.” It would thus not be necessary to extend de Saussure’s scheme to account for this aspect of language. In my opinion, the source of the problem is that von Glasersfeld in his 1995 book uses the notion of a concept in two ways when presenting his semantics. When introducing the semantic scheme in chapter 7 he takes off from de Saussure’s concept of “concept.” However, in the rest of the book, “concept” is given a Piagetian reading. Following Piaget, he focusses on the “schemas“ that a child is abstracting from iterated motor patterns and other experiental situations. I believe that the best way of interpreting the distinction between “concept” and “re-presentation” in von Glasersfeld’s semantics is to say that “concept” corresponds to cued representations while “re-presentations” should be seen as detached representations. When discussing Piaget’s constructivist theory of knowing, von Glasersfeld (1995, p. 59) introduces a distinction in the development of object concepts which supports this interpretation: “There are two consecutive phases in this development. The first leads to the establishment of object concepts in the sense that the infant coordinates (associates) sensory signals of the ‘perceptual’ kind that happen to be recurrently available at the same time in its sensory field […]. These concepts could be described as routines for the reconstruction of a particular object of interest, whenever its sensory components are available. Their successful composition may then serve as trigger for a specific activity that has been associated with the object. In that case, an observer might say that the child recognizes the object, although the child may still be unable to conjure up a re-presentation […].” In the case of spoken language, the sensory signals are speech sounds and the associations are the ones depicted in figure 5. However, if this interpretation is correct it shows that the double arrows in figure 5 are problematic since there are many re-presentations (detached representations) that do not correspond to concepts in the Piagetian sense. Thus there is only a partial mapping between the re-presentations and the concepts.

5. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUESTION The epistemological question concerns how a person can learn the meanings of a language. It is commonplace that language is conventional in the sense that the connections between most of the linguistic signs and their meanings are arbitrary. Consequently, the semantics of a language has to be learned by individual speakers. This comprises a problem for semantic realism since a semantic mapping between a langauge and a world (or several worlds or a 9

partial world) does not tell us anything about how individual users “grasp” the meanings determined by such a mapping. For the cognitivistic approach, the epistemological question has a simple answer: A person grasps the meaning of an expression by relating it to a cognitive structure. However, in order to give some substance to the answer, more must be said about how the connection is established. Here de Saussure’s statement that “the two elements involved in the linguistic sign are both psychological and are connected in the brain by an associative link” (see above) provides the central clue: A theory of learning based on associations will construe the coupling between a linguistic expression and its cognitive meaning as just a special case of learning in general. Could not a semantic realist give the same answer? Instead of forming an association between words and concepts, the language user could perhaps learn associations between words and things in the world. This would be a way of answering the epistemological question within a realist semantics. The problem for such a proposal is to specify what would constitute the association. In the cognitivistic approach, the association is realised by neuronal activity patterns connecting the different parts of the brains that are representing sound patterns and concepts. But what would be the physical realisation of an association from the sound pattern “Pferd” for a German speaker and a horse in a field? True enough, real horses reflect photons, and emit sound-waves and chemical particles that may affect one’s eyes, ears and nose, respectively, and then become associated with the sound “Pferd.” I submit, however, that such a connection between the reality and a symbolic sound pattern always goes via the mental concept for a horse.4 Thus one can’t learn associations between things in the world and sound patterns without first having the relevant concepts. The upshot is that a realist answer to the epistemological question presumes the cognitivistic answer. Even if an associationist story could be told for the required relation between sound patterns and things in the world, there are other unsurmountable problems for a realist account of the epistemological problem. Within a language there are infinite possibilities of referring to things or events that (1) don’t exist, (2) will only exist in the future, and (3) will never exist, but are only figments of the imagination. How could an associative link to the world function in these cases? I can’t take seriously an answer from intensional semantics that presumes associative links between sounds and entities in merely “possible” worlds. How would such a link be physically realized? How could one learn something about a non-actual world? I conclude that realist brands of semantics have serious problems with the epistemological question. Now even if it is assumed that all speakers use the same vocabulary and grammar and if each one of them is able to determine the meaning of the linguistic expressions, it remains to be explained how they can mean the same thing, i.e., that there is some well-behaved relation between individual semantic mappings. This is the communicative problem that is the topic of the following section.

4The symbolic role of language is important here. For the signalling function, a behavioristic answer (in terms of stimulus-response) to the corresponding epistemological question may be sufficient.

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6. THE COMMUNICATIVE QUESTION The communicative question concerns how we can know that we talk about the same things. Firstly, it should be noted that realist theories of semantics have no problem with this question: Since the meanings of the words are out there in the world, we will talk about these things as soon as we speak the same language, i.e., as soon as we share the mapping from linguistic expressions to the world. On the other hand, the communicative question is a genuine problem for cognitivistic theories of semantics. Of course, it can be said that symbols refering to something in one person's inner environment can be used to communicate as soon as the listeners have, or are prepared to add, the corresponding references in their inner environments. The actual conditions of the outer situation need not play any role for the communication to take place: Two prisoners can talk fervently about life on a sunny Pacific island in the pitch dark of their cell. But how do we know that other people have “corresponding” references in their inner environments? A heavy attack against the very possibility of cognitivistic semantics with respect to the communication problem has been launched by Putnam (1975, 1988). He argues that the claim of cognitive semantics that meanings are mental entities in individuals’ brains is fundamentally flawed. His argument that meanings can't be in the head starts from the following assumptions about meaning and mental representations, all of which are accepted within cognitive semantics (Putnam 1988, p. 19): 1. Every word the speaker uses is associated in her mind with a certain mental representation. 2. Two words are synonymous (have the same meaning) just in case they are associated with the same mental representation by the speakers who use those words. 3. The mental representation is what the word refers to if anything. Putnam claims that these three conditions cannot be simultaneously satisfied. The reason is that we “cannot individuate concepts and beliefs without reference to the environment” (1988, p. 73). A central part of his argument can be illustrated by the following example (Putnam 1975, p. 226-227): “Suppose you are like me and cannot tell an elm from a beech tree. We still say that the extension of 'elm' in my idiolect is the same as the extension of 'elm' in anyone else's, viz., the set of all elm trees, and that the set of all beech trees is the extension of 'beech' in both of our idiolects. Thus 'elm' in my idiolect has a different extension from 'beech' in your idiolect (as it should). Is it really credible that this difference in extension is brought about by some difference in our concepts? My concept of an elm tree is exactly the same as my concept of a beech tree (I blush to confess). […] Cut the pie any way you like, meanings just ain't in the head!” The upshot is, realists would claim, that meanings must refer to something noncognitive. In other words, if they are right, semantics needs reality. In my opinion, the lesson to be learned from Putnam's argument is not that cognitive semantics is impossible, but that it has forgotten about the social structure of language. In Gärdenfors (1993), I argue that the social meanings of 11

the expressions of a language are indeed determined from their individual meanings, i.e., the meanings the expressions have for the individuals, together with the structure of linguistic power that exists in the community. In contrast to Putnam, I claim that no reference to the external world is needed to handle the problem he presents. The linguistic powers concern who is the master of meaning, i.e., who decides on what is the correct meaning of an expression in a society. There are two basic types of power structures: oligarchial and democratic.5 An oligarchial (or dictatorial) power structure would emanate in a society where the social meanings are determined by a group of linguistic experts writing dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks on the proper use of the language, etc. When a member of such a society is in doubt about the meaning of a locution he would rely on the judgments of these experts. In contrast, a democratic power structure would appear in a society where linguistic meaning is identified with “common usage.” In a society with this power structure a dictator or a small group of speakers cannot, by themselves, change the meaning of an expression; for this, the consent of almost all language users is mandatory. This is analogous to prices in a free market – a single agent cannot decide to change the price of a good. I do not claim that all parts of the semantics of a language is governed by the same power structure. A more realistic description is to say that a language is a conglomerate of several sublanguages, each with its own conditions of mastery. The semantics of the language of lawyers is determined by criteria that are different from those of the language of entomologists; which in turn are different from the canons used for slang expressions. For lawyers' and entomologists' expressions the power structures may very well be oligarchial, while the use of slang is a more democratic business. In support of this, it seems as if the “hedge” “technically” can be used for expressions that are governed by an oligarchial power structure, but not for those the meaning of which are determined democratically: “Technically, a spider is not an insect” is correct, but “Technically, a hooker is a prostitute” sounds odd.6 Putnam (1975, pp. 227-229) describes something very much like an oligarchial power structure in his hypothesis about the “division of linguistic labor.” This hypothesis maintains that every linguistic community “[…] possesses at least some terms whose associated “criteria” are known only to a subset of the speakers who acquire the terms, and whose use by the other speakers depends upon a structured cooperation between them and the speakers in the relevant subsets” (p. 228). He claims that the hypothesis accounts for the failures of the assumptions that knowing the meaning of a locution is just a matter of being in a certain psychological state and that the meaning of a term determines its extension. Putnam's argument for this is that “[w]henever a term is subject to the division of linguistic labor, the “average” speaker who acquires it does not acquire anything that fixes its extension. In particular his individual psychological state certainly does not fix its meaning; it is only the sociolinguistic state of the collective linguistic body to which the speaker belongs that fixes the extension” (p. 229). The last remark indicates that Putnam thinks of the fixation of social 5This partitioning is supported by a couple of theorems in Gärdenfors (1993). 6See Lakoff (1987), pp. 122-125.

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meaning in much the same way as in my analysis. However, it seems as if he misses the possibility of democratic power structures, which is a different way of determining social meaning.7 My position can be summarized as follows: Social meanings are not in the head of a single individual, but they emerge from the conceptual schemes in the heads of the language users together with the semantic power structure. Even if Putnam cannot distinguish oaks from elms, they are distinguished in the emergent social semantics. So when he says that he knows that the meaning of “elm” and “oak” are distinct, he knows that the social meanings differ. In his individual conceptual structure, however, they are undistinguishable. Hence cognitive semantics alone cannot answer the communicative question, but it must be complemented with information about the linguistic power structure. A delicate question is whether the power structure should count as part of “reality.” Obviously, it is not part of the domain of the semantic mapping (which is constituted of cognitive entities), so, independently of the answer, the addition of a social power structure will not make cognitive semantics a realist semantics. In any case, such a power structure is normally not thought of as part of semantics, but rather a pragmatic feature. However, in spite of traditional linguistic theory, the dividing line between pragmatics and semantics is not very sharp. For example, Jackendoff (1987 p. 97) claims that there is no formal distinction of level between semantics and pragmatics. Also Langacker (1986, Section 4.2) argues that semantics is just conventionalized pragmatics. *** Vygotsky and social constructivism Let me give another illustration of the role of social interactions in the analysis of meaning. From the early works of Kripke and on, one of the major successes of intensional semantics was that it provided a formal semantics for modal expressions. However, the modals being analysed were of an abstract philosophical nature and hardly any attention was paid to linguistic data about modal expressions. In a recent study (Winter and Gärdenfors 1995), a cognitive semantics (or rather pragmatics) is proposed that covers that whole field of (Swedish) modal verbs. The basic notions in the analysis are, firstly, the power relations between the speaker and the hearer (and sometimes a third party), and secondly, the expectations of the actors with respect to the action governed by the modal verb. For example, the expressions containing “want to p,” where p is an action, occur typically when the speaker wants p but is uncertain whether the hearer has the same attitude. Thus, if the speaker is the subordinate of the two, and the hearer the one in power, the speaker can say “I want to p” to mark his attitude and to signal that he is uncertain of the hearer's attitude. Or, in the reverse power relation, the speaker can, instead of directly exerting his power, say “Do you want to p?” when he expects that the hearer does not know his attitude. The speaker will then, by conversational implicature, expect that the hearer will understand the speaker’s attitude (and, consequently, perform the action p). 7 The only remark in this direction is the following: “It would be of interest, in particular, to discover if extremely primitive peoples were sometimes exceptions to this hypothesis (which would indicate that the division of linguistic labor is a product of social evolution), or if even they exhibit it” (1975, p. 229).

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Another example is the use of “shall.” The typical use of this modal occurs in situations where the speaker is in power, when the speaker wants p, he expects that the hearer does not want p, and he does not expect the hearer to have a correct expectation of his (= the speaker’s) attitude. In this situation, “You shall p!” is used to inform the hearer about the speaker’s attitude, and to remind him of the power relation. Thus, also this analysis of modal expressions is an example of a cognitive model containing a social element. In brief, it is proposed that the primary meaning of modals is to express power relations.

7. PUTNAM ON NATURAL KINDS In a more recent book, Putnam (1988) also discusses “conceptual role” semantics, in particular in relation to natural-kind terms. He argues that the meaning of such terms cannot be given in terms of their conceptual roles only, but “once we have identified a word as a natural-kind term, then we determine whether it is synomous with another natural-kind term primarily on the basis of the extensions of the two words” (p. 50). Here, extension is, of course the set of things in the world that the word applies to. So natural-kind terms presume a realistic component for their semantics according to Putnam. But, how do we know when something is a natural-kind term? Putnam is aware of the problem: “Some words which were intended to be natural-kind terms turn out not to refer to natural kinds. “Phlogiston” was intended to be the name of a natural kind, but it turned out that there was no such natural kind. And similarly for “ether” and “caloric.” In these cases it does seem that something like conceptual role is the dominant factor in meaning, for obvious reasons; we don't want to say that the words “ether” and “caloric” and “phlogiston” are synonomous just because they have the same (empty) extension. […] Indeed the conceptual role theory comes closest to being true in the case of words with an empty extension.” (p. 50) However, here he seems to rely on some form of realist essentialism. If “phlogiston” could turn out not to be a natural-kind term, so can “water” and “gold,” unless one assumes that natural kinds exist independently of language and cognition. And this is the kind of essentialist assumption Putnam needs to make in order to argue against the conceptual approach. But this is putting the cart before the horse: he assumes that a term is defined in terms of realist notions in order to show that it cannot be given a purely conceptual meaning. In contrast to Putnam I claim that the meaning of natural-kind terms like “gold” and “water” do change because of changes in the linguistic power structure. Orwell's “Newspeak” is a fictionary example of this phenomenon. I believe that this kind of meaning change is common in science in connection with scientific revolutions. For example, before the Copernican revolution “the earth” meant something that did not move, and before Einstein “mass” was something that was constant of an object.8

8For examples in the social sciences, see Foucault's “archeological” investigations of the terminologies in various areas (“madness” for instance).

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8. CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR REALITY In this article my point of departure has been the four fundamental questions for semantics. On the basis of these questions, the cognitive and the constructivist approaches to semantics have been contrasted with the more traditional realist types of semantics. To sum up the previous discussion, the cognitive and the constructivist approaches can handle the epistemological question by relying on an associationistic theory of learning. On the other hand, realist branches of semantics have serious problems with this question, unless they answer it via a cognitivistic model. Realists have no direct problem answering the communicative question. Putnam, among others, has argued that a cognitivistic semantics can’t give a satisfactory answer. I have tried to rebut their criticism by supplementing a cognitivistic semantics with information about who has power over linguistic meaning. Well, then, does semantics need reality? The realist credo is a loud “yes.” (Some of them, for example David Lewis, even say that we need several realities in the form of possible worlds). The answer according to constructivism is “no.” Von Glasersfeld (1995, p. 137) formulates the position in the following elegant way: “Language, then, opens a not quite transparent window on the abstractions and representations individuals glean from their experiental reality, but it does not, as analytical philosophers were hoping, open any window on the ontological reality of an independent world.” The answer according to cognitive semantics is “not directly.” Once we accept the conceptual structure of an individual as given, the semantic mapping between sound patterns and the detached representations that constitute meanings can be described without any recourse to the external world. But a second part of the cognitivistic answer is “indirectly,” since the conceptual structure is built up in an individual in interaction with reality. However, for the communicative problem reality is not needed – only information about the social roles of the members of the linguistic community.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Ingar Brinck and Annika Wallin for helpful discussions on mental representations and constructivism.

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