. Literally, ‘theory of signs’. A generic term covering three important species. In each case philosophers study the notions in general and from an abstract point of view, while linguists study their application to particular languages and adopt an empirical approach to the more general questions, as in the case of semantics. Syntax or syntactics studies signs independently of their interpretation. In philosophy it studies some of the properties of logical systems (see AXIOM). In linguistics it studies the formal aspects of natural languages (e.g. why it is that ‘the man runs’ is a well-formed string of words while ‘the runs man’ is not). (This usage is rather different from that where syntax, as the study of sentences, contrasts with grammar, as the study of individual words.) Semantics studies signs in relation to what, or how, they signify. It is the general study of meaning. Pragmatics studies signs in relation to what we do with them, given that they have the meaning they have (cf.
pragmatic IMPLICATION). It also studies meaning itself in so far as this depends on what we do with the signs (e.g. SPEECH ACT theories of meaning); here it fuses with semantics. (In this entry SIGN is used in its wide sense.)
N.Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, 1965. (Important source for his ideas at that time.)
T.Crane, ‘The language of thought: no syntax without semantics’, Mind and Language, 1990. (Claims that if there is a LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT it must have semantics as well as syntax, so that there cannot be a ‘syntactical theory of the mind’.)
J.D.Fodor, Semantics: Theories of Meaning in Generative Grammar, Harvard UP, 1979.
H.P.Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard UP, 1989. (Collected essays on semantics and pragmatics by important contributor, especially to pragmatics.)
*R.K.Larson and G.M.A.Segal, Knowledge of Meaning: Introduction to Semantic Theory, MIT Press, 1995. (General introduction.)
C.W.Morris, Signs, Languages and Behaviour, Prentice-Hall, 1946, chapters 8 § 1. (Source of the distinctions.)
W.V.O.Quine, Elementary Logic, Ginn and Co., Boston, New York, 1941. (One of many text-books introducing basic ideas of formal logic.)
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