Dėl tariamos nulinės jungties

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA XLVIII (2003), 177-184 The adjectives cruel, ruthless in the Žemaičių dialect attracted the attention of Steven Young, a Baltist at the University of Baltimore, in his very interesting article „Lithuanian žiaurūs: žiudrus“ (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 47, 109-115). The sentences taken from DONZ 453, 458 p. seem to require some remarks like these: pakulines laba: 2odros a.udeklas; vi.kšręs Z0dros | pjd.usta ližūvę givuol'ūn. The second sentence of Zodra is transposable not žudrūs, but žiudrūs: caterpillar žiudrūs cuts its tongue into a beast (Dat. sing.; noun givuolis | g'ivūolis; here in the old traditional South Samogitian Varniškiai dialect the non-etymological n is added to the dat. sing. ending -w > -uo). It is not žudrus, but probably my obvious proofreading error will have misled the author, although the nest —žuudrus, i.e. all sentences defined by the word Ziudrus (the 6-year (1969-1975) compilation of the text was very complicated with prohibitions, complaints, etc.). In living speech, this adjective is now forgotten, usually used by old villagers; its roots are žiaud-, žiud-, therefore it is only žiudrūs, and scholars from distant countries who do not have that dialectal dictionary may sometimes hesitate and start quoting the non-existent word *žudrus. Vytautas Vitkauskas Received 2003 05 05 Lithuanian Language Institute P. Vileišio g. 5, 2055 Vilnius, Lithuania ABOUT THE NULL CONJUNCT This text is primarily intended to discuss such sentences as: My brother is disabled; A persistent cough is a symptom of a serious illness, etc. In contemporary Lithuanian grammar (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1994) they are considered noun sentences, corresponding to the trinomial model, because Oras gražus is considered to have a zero conjunction (p. 612). Before embarking on a polemic on this narrow issue, I will start by mentioning two statements without which the polemic is meaningless and to which I will try to adhere strictly. First statement: Nothing has any signs. In a joke I say it differently: Nobody's hair grows. It seems that the formulation of the statement belongs to Immanuel Kant, but I do not remember it well, and since I do not support the truth of the statements by authority, it is enough for me that I consider jj to be right. Logic does not operate directly by word, but in its theory of classes it accepts a null, or empty, class (I note that it is called null by the sign used to mark it, and empty — by the 178 | NOTE the value of the mark, which is logically called the name value). This class does not have any elements, and only elements can have attributes. Let me give an example for intuition: when we demolish half of a house, it is pointless to ask how many windows the no longer existing side of the house has. If someone thinks that must can be used in the meaning of "had", he should admit that in this case must is used indirectly and in meaningful conversation it must be replaced by the direct form. From words used indirectly or indefinitely, only vague or obviously false statements can be made, and every science must avoid them. For example, from the statement that thought is transmitted by language, it follows that thoughts, along with words, enter the air and fly through it. Moreover, if we pass on the thoughts, they no longer remain in the mind of the speaker (in the literal sense) (and therefore it is no longer possible to ask what he said). This alone shows that it is pointless to start creating a worthwhile theory, if its support is chosen from logically unprocessed and unregulatedly used words. What happens when you do not follow my aforementioned statement, I will illustrate for intuition with the following sentence: Although there are no mermaids (nothing), they have beautiful breasts (sign). This statement is an absurdity from the point of view of logic, a logically contradictory statement, and the affirmation of such statements is a futile thing. I consider the explanation of the null connection term, now beloved by linguists, to be the same statement, because Although there is no connection (none), but it has a direct present tense meaning (sign). It is not possible to free oneself from the logical absurdity by powerful words, or by sound rhetoric, or by relying on authorities, because the absurdity remains resistant to all these actions. There are two ways to try to escape from absurdity. The first is to prove that the statement that nobody has any attributes is not categorical and can therefore be ignored. I consider such a method completely unperspective, because it is a logical statement and, to get rid of it, it would be necessary to create a new one — the logic of nothing. I think only the second way is promising: it is necessary to carefully analyze where our thinking makes a mistake, which leads to absurd sentences. For this analysis I need a second statement. It is as follows: Psychology is a conglomerate of false and thought-- retarding opinions. I do not call it a theory, because the statements of the theory are logically processed and systematized. The most common form of psychology is psychoanalysis. His adepts acknowledge that the meanings of words and sentences exist objectively, but still hold the view that they must be described in terms of mental facts (thoughts). Of course, in this case, no psyche can fit. For example, it is not suitable when people do not understand what they are saying. What criteria should be used when looking for a suitable psychic? I reject the psyche of linguists in advance, because in this article I will show that the thoughts of linguists are also different. Of course, I also reject the use of authority, leaving this to theology. I will note that not only our language, but also our non-verbal experiences have their legal counterparts in the psyche — even when we are cutting wood we have to think about what we are doing. Is it necessary to describe all our activities in psychic terms? Why do other sciences, such as zoology, not describe their empirical objects as psychic correlates? After all, for example, alongside wolves, moose, elephants in the animal classification could include zero unicorns, zero pegasus, etc. Therefore, I may be objected to by those who argue that language is a system of signs, and therefore cannot be compared to animals, which are not signs. There is no consensus on the concept of the mark, but there are two different opinions: empirical and subjective. I, as an empiricist, prefer the first opinion and will put it here in the words of logicians, which do not conflict with the usual understanding of the sign (and fit well with common sense). A sign (they use the term symbol) is for them “an empirical object used to indicate other empirical or abstract objects”! (at- | Jlozuweckuū ci06aps: /ĮEOGOPT, Mocksa: Meicnis, 1994, 208 (stumpning ĮEOOPT means: /Įedykmuenas opmaruzacus meopui. —V.Z.). REMARKS | 179 I will point out that the definition intuitively follows the postulate of empiricism). For example, the sign birch as an empirical, i.e. pronounced, object refers to another empirical object — a deciduous tree with white leaves, and the pronounced sign number — the abstract object "number- ", one of the basic concepts of mathematics. Therefore, I consider the statement of the Contemporary Lithuanian Grammar (p. 5) that “the units of language structure — signs are two-sided” to be a subjective and confusing statement, which has arisen as a result of deception and indirect speech. Speaking precisely and humanely, there is no point in calling the sign two-sided. The empirical object, i.e. the sign, and its meaning (in other words: sign, function) do not in turn form an even more real two-sided sign. If we adopt such a common sense-free way of speaking, we have to say that on the road we do not see road signs, only the sides of road signs. Since the use of language itself goes hand in hand with common sense, is it possible to tear away from it the theory of language and start speaking strangely? Ferdinand de Saussure was the first to call the sign of language a two-sided sign, and many, without thinking, bite into this word (perhaps for authority?). Saussure had a basis for this description of the sign: it seemed to him that expression and meaning were inseparable like the two sides of a sheet of paper, since he was an early psychologist and spoke of signs as psychic facts (at the same time he argued for the social nature of language, but did not reconcile this character with the individual psyche at all). When it is acknowledged that “language expressions and content plans are interrelated, but do not directly determine each other” (p. 5), there is no reason to use the concept of a two-sided sign in the literal sense — it is just empty rhetoric, a relic of the past. True, the concept of the two-sided sign can be saved in one case: the sign must be transferred from objective reality to the psychic realm, and the transferred sign must be regarded as more important and real — then it will be possible to say that in the psyche the concept of expression corresponds to the concept of meaning. Perhaps the authors of the grammar would not even object to this, because for them the structure of language is “a system existing in the consciousness of people” (p. 5). This is no longer a methodological, but a truly substantial psychologism, only it is not clear whether it is perceptual (relating language to images) or conceptual (relating it to concepts). According to this view, the ancient scripts are in principle indecipherable. I do not see the slightest need to discuss this, in my opinion, hopelessly outdated and no longer defendable by any arguments viewpoint after it was severely criticized by Leonas Zawadowskis* (his views were translated by me into Lithuanian, so it is easy to get acquainted with them more widely?). Strictly speaking, in our minds there is not the structure of language with its signs, but the ability to operate it. But as we are individuals, we can only operate on part of that structure. The whole structure of language in the head could only exist in one case: there should be an ideal language user, but in reality there is no such one. Thus, alongside subjective proficiency, the structure of language must exist objectively. One can ask, and it is a legitimate question, how this objectivity is to be understood. Since the language is very complicated and therefore can give rise to many peripheral questions, I will illustrate the situation with a simpler example — the multiplication table. The question is: where do the multipliers exist, especially when no one multiplies (and multipliers are the meanings of mathematical signs)? Mathematicians have long denounced psychological interpretation, and this is not surprising, because they are used to thinking much more precisely and strictly than linguists, whose thoughts are unfortunately often in the heads of others. The nature of the existence of numbers is disputed by mathematicians, because numbers, like all abstract objects, are universals, and the dispute about them is not yet over (as Bertrand Russell believes). ZAWADOWSKI, L. Linguistic Theory of Language, Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1966. Žurys, V. L. Zavadovskis's views on language. Kalbotyra 24 (1), 1972, 111-119. 180 | REMARKS tyti philosophers. But language can be studied without solving the ontological question. And physicists do not really know what gravity is, but they are successfully studying it. I would like to add that the above-mentioned definition of a sign leaves no room for zero signs (they cannot exist according to Kant’s description of nothingness). Whoever began to use the concept of the zero sign probably made it insane in this way: if an empirical object has meaning, then its absence also has meaning and therefore is a sign. It is possible that the thought is derived by implication, but according to the postulate of the empirical sign it remains only a thought and not a sign — it needs an empirical object. Some people are confused about zero, saying that zero is a sign—or a straight ellipse, or a circle crossed over diagonally. But this is notation in writing, not in natural language. Otherwise, of course, we have signs for nothing and for closely related concepts, cf. the words nothing, emptiness, hole. Unfortunately, we do not have the opposite case. I consider the use of the concept of the zero sign as a (perhaps unconscious) variant of idealism (rather subjective), 0 empirical sciences, to which I add linguistics, hold the position of realism. Rejecting the existence of a language system in the minds of subjects, one must accept the postulate that language can and must be studied as an objective phenomenon, like other empirical objects. Such objective things are statements, otherwise communications. Communication has meaning even without communicating, because the communicative function of language is secondary — it is based on the representative function — the conventional representation of some fragment of reality (without this function, language would be a pure game). A communication communicates only that and what it represents. It communicates not the subjective thought of the speaker (all thoughts in the minds of subjects are subjective by the fact of their existence), but a certain fragment of reality. Only on the basis of this fact it is possible to lie, mislead, confuse (in this case, the thoughts obviously do not coincide with what is said). The sentence Black swans is indicates the existence of not such a thought in the speaker- ’s mind (whether it is so or not, it does not matter to us: besides, how you will verify it, and can you base clear things on unverifiable ones?). This statement is a statement about reality and its truth can be verified by going to Australia and obviously convinced of it, but it can also be relied on visual material or based on, for example, the descriptions of biologists. Based on what has been said, I will clearly distinguish between two concepts: the meaning of the communication, which is given objectively, and the interpretation of that meaning — the manipulation of one’s thoughts (I will note that interpretation is here understood more narrowly, assuming that the meaning of the communication is understood without interpretation — according to the relationships that objectively exist in the system of language). I say that only the meaning of communication is the meaning of speech. All interpretations belong not to speech, but to thoughts "around language and its meaning- ". Let me illustrate this with one example: from the sentence Kepler died in poverty, we obtain by implication the correct idea that Kepler lived (the so-called existential presupposition). If someone would say that it implicitly already lies in the meaning of the sentence Kepler died in poverty, according to my interpretation, he would say the untrue, because it lies not in the meaning, but in the meaning. The search for meaning, different interpretations, possible objects, is a never-ending process, and the meaning of a sentence in terms of meaning is “closed”. For example, for a linguist one of the meanings of the word eye is the organ of vision, although there is a lot to think about the eye and to say about it (in other words). Unfortunately, it seems to me that not a single American linguist does not separate the meaning of communication from the thoughts about this meaning. Now that I have clearly set out my position on the meaning of language, I will proceed to a specific investigation by taking the sentence My brother is disabled. In order to avoid any ambiguity, I will immediately point out that this sentence does not belong to “speech” if it is necessary to assign to it individual statements, each of which is connected with a specific act of speech (it is easy to underst- NOTES | 181 language, because it can only belong to an abstract sentence scheme. It is "hanging" between a concrete statement and an abstract language system. Therefore, it is not possible to deal only with the concepts of language and “Shneka”. Leon Zawadowski has quite rightly said that such sentences belong to a third thing — the potential system of language, and I accept his interpretation. Grammar gives examples not of specific statements not separated from the speech act, but of facts of the potential language system (although they are indicated by their authors). Understood in this way, the sentence I am examining is twice abstracted from the act of speech. One, we no longer include the speakers, the specific location of the act and other parameters in the sentence. Secondly, the sentence itself does not indicate the speaker with its words (not said, for example, so: I, Vlad Žulys, say that...). Often linguists claim that every sentence has a modality (and perhaps through it is related to the speaker). From the point of view of logic, the sentence we are examining is an assertive proposition (Kant’s division), and assertive statements have no modality (possibility, necessity).” Thus, in this aspect, it is abstracted from the speaker (linguists who disagree with this have two choices: either to prove that the logics are wrong, or otherwise to reformulate the concept of modality and show that it can reasonably be used and reformulated). The sentence My brother is disabled is completely abstracted from space (here I note that I am consistently using the abstraction method). And since space is usually mentioned together with time (Kant even considered both these concepts to be aprior with regard to thinking, but now we know that he was wrong), I turn to the essential thing for me: this sentence as a statement is also abstracted from time. In other words, it is an infinitive sentence, and it is quite understandable why: it has no time-indicating element. In its meaning, it exists where all other abstractions exist (in the class of timeless concepts). This is nothing special: we are human beings, and our power of abstraction is so great that we easily make statements that are distracted from both place and time. Of course, in order to indicate the time one can use other expanding words, for example, to say that My brother is disabled since he was little, but, to be precise, this is not an extension of the same sentence, but another sentence. Based on the method of abstraction, I described the meaning of the communication here (of course, I did not explain the words my, brother, disabled, because it is trivial for me). This meaning is the meaning of language, and in it I consider very important the fact that time was abstracted here. Thus, I consider unjustified the attempt to include non-processual and non-temporal sentences in the paradigm of the verb be as present tense sentences (p. 291). In the paradigm, they should go from the side as timeless. But the traditional grammar, to which the grammar of contemporary Lithuanian language belongs, which has not been freed from psychologism, interprets the sentence I have examined differently. It is usually said that the connection is missed, unsaid, implied. I have already presented the absurdity flowing from the zero connection as the absence of a connection, so I will not talk about it anymore. The words omitted, unsaid, implied in the language of science I consider to be general, not clear enough. In order to use them more strictly, I will add the words randomly and necessarily. If the conjunction is "missed" by chance, it can be understood as the fact that it is present in some sentences, but not in others. Therefore, we are dealing with a stochastic feature of the system, and such features are interpreted not unequivocally, but through the laws of their probability distribution." Therefore, it is possible to describe only the frequency of use of the connection, and that is all. 4 and that this sentence can be repeated, and in this case we will have two “speech” statements). But this sentence does not belong and See. The Encyclopedia of the World's Languages (2nd ed., 2002). Zr. The Soviet Encyclopedia, 1983, pp. 422. 182 | REMARKS However, if a connection is necessarily omitted, the omission must be interpreted unequivocally. In this case, omission is a failure to say. It is a sentence with a conjunction in the mind, but realized without it. But this is not enough: we still have to rely on the assumption that the thought statement is the true, “better- ”, primary, and the realized one has a handicap, is secondary. This is where we come to the essence of psychologism, that the real, more perfect system of language is in our heads (I have already mentioned that this is a variant of subjective idealism, from which empirical sciences tremble). In fact, when thinking and acting in this way, the meaning of the sentence is not determined objectively communicated, but whether consciously or not well conscious of the communicated meaning is moved to its reinterpretation (I have already said that reinterpretations, however small, do not belong to the meaning of language- ). This is treated as follows: My brother is disabled as being detached from time is reinterpreted as My brother is disabled as being detached from time. The abstract statement becomes less abstract at the same time. It is clear that it is activated by an external thought. In this way, the objective meaning of the sentence is shaken with the subjective thought (this is why absurd statements appear, but I leave them to the readers who are used to “zero connections” and similar things). Functional linguistics (I don’t know if it’s consistent), completely denying psychologism, considers such a confusion to be a mistake. Her sentences My brother is disabled and My brother is disabled are two different sentences both formally and in terms of meaning, and they are both objective, although they have many similarities. Accepting the idea of Contemporary Lithuanian Grammar (p. 5) that we should follow the “principle of dynamic synchrony”, I consider such sentences to be competing: intemporal sentences, a very old Indo-European type, begin to push sentences with time. What is the situation now, what type prevails, can be determined only by a specific study. From a logical point of view, the sentences examined differ in that the second sentence contains the true logical predicate® and the predicate operator (is), which indicates a special binary logical relationship that cannot be explained by other relationships. Formally, it is represented as (x = X), where x is the subject, «= the logical operator, 0 X — the property (this interpretation is now considered more acceptable than the representation of the predicate as a propositional function, because it omits the predicate operator). In the sentence My brother is disabled there is no predicate operator as a linear sign. Whether it should be sought elsewhere — in the word order, intonation — is very unclear. But even in such a sentence as I work, the predicate is clearly expressed and without I, which is stressed as a factor by syntaxists, it is clear that the subject is indicated by the ending -u, but the predicate itself is not very clear (it can only be said that the subject and the predicate are expressed syncretically). The interpretation of I work as I work is possible only in the soil of psychologism. In the vast majority of cases, I is used pleonastically as the second indicator of the subject. The texts show that it is used not jį necessarily, but ne by chance, and therefore it is connected with the verb only by random connections (this must change the existing understanding of coordination, but correcting it is my job). Logicians correctly point out that “in traditional logic, the relation of predication is only very roughly formalized by the word in such statements as (S is P), where $ —the subject of the statement, 0 P — the property of the statement S”*. When logicians, in formulating such statements as (S is P), abstract from everything that is not a form of thought, they are, precisely speaking, treating (at least intuitively and practically) not as a connection in the full extent of the concept, but only as a connection, leaving aside that which is not. Jlo2uvecxuū c106aps: JIE@OPT, Mocksa: Meicas, 1994, 191-192. 7 Page 171-173. 8 Tenpat, 171. NOTES | 183 does not belong to the connection. I think that traditional linguistics did not realize this process of abstraction and, when describing language, it was also treated only as a logical connection, and from this two further conclusions were drawn: 1) that being as a syntactic connection has no independent lexical meaning and therefore 2) in the sentence “is used only as a certain indicator of time and modality, i.e. gives the noun-expressed sign the meanings of time and sequence” (p. 479). There is no need to believe these statements as long as it remains unclear from what logic has abstracted. Let us think as follows: (1) There was a (great) heat. The statement is existential. In logic, such statements do not have a predicate (Immanuel Kant already said that being is not a predicate because it is not a property). They are now formalized with the existence quantor 3: (3 x), but this quantor actually denotes not existence but quantity (there is at least one, i.e. the set is not empty). In the sentence under consideration was has the meaning of existence, being, and this is the lexical meaning of the word (let us call such being existential, or being). From the point of view of thought, existence is more important than objects and their characteristics—- it is the basis of objects in the sense that without existence no empirical object is possible, and only such objects can have characteristics (now it must be clear how to justify the statement Nobody has characteristics). Heat is a word of full substantivization—a noun. (2) It was hot. This sentence also has the present tense, and kdršta differs from karštis as a word of incomplete substantivization. (3) —hot is a property, incomplete both semantically and syntactically (this is marked with a dash). Semantically, it is incomplete because it is not independent (like heat), but a property of someone else. It is syntactically incomplete because there is no property holder. (4) — was hot has the same existing present tense, the logical basis of the property hot. The construction was hot yet nothing indicates that it had any sign of connection. It acquires the function of a conjunction only in a sentence, e.g. : (5) It was a hot day. Thus, the syntactic meaning of the connection contributed to the lexical meaning of the existence, but the lexical to meaning is not blank. Ji itself is secondary (here it is noticeable in passing that the conjunction ne connects the subject with the su predicate, but the predicate connects to the subject, which is — shown by the discussion of the already mentioned predicate operator). That was his own sign, o ne with what characteristic indicators indicate the existence, iš see comparison: (6) The pot looked hot. 184 | COMMENTS (7) The pot was hot. The first sentence seemed to have to be compared not with the attributes “given” to the noun, but directly with was. The first (seemed) to indicate visibility (and therefore may be considered a modal word), but the second (was) to indicate true of truest existence (it has already been said that assertive statements have no modality- ). This analysis has shown what remains in natural language beyond the logical abstraction, and that is enough. 2003 04 20, during Easter Vladas Žulys Received 2003 05 09 Tako g. 1-7 LT-4324 Akademija, Kaunas region, Lithuania