KNOWLEDGE EVOLUTION

Symbols

Shift

Connectives
Quantifiers

Syncategorematic

Parenthesis
Comma

Categorematic

Names

Figure 2

2.1.2 Linguistic Semantics

Linguistic semantics has also faced same cumulative effect like formal semantics, though
resulting in a different direction. It also makes a distinction between closed class vs. open
class lexical items (Talmy 2000). Closed class lexical item, along with the notion of
selectional restriction, determines the semantic well-formedness. The hypothesis of
semantic well-formedness in linguistics has its root in logic, in terms of permissible
computing operations, on one hand, and on the other, it has the nascent ontological
support, the need of which has been felt by the formal semantics. As a result, linguistic
semantics, also feels an internal urge to shift its points of interest to the semantics of the
open class lexical item, from the closed class one. For example, consider the following
two sentences:

(5)    John stabbed the man.

(6)    *A tree stabbed the man.

Sentence (6) is ill-formed because of the reason that the subject is not in
accordance with the semantic necessity of the predicate (= stab), associated with it. The
action of stabbing requires a human agency. Therefore, ‘stab’ will never select ‘tree’ as
its subject. The point of interest is the existence of a developmental parallelism between
the formal semantics and linguistic semantics. But in comparison to formal semantics,
linguistic semantics goes far beyond the actual scope, by recognizing cognition, as an
aspect of semantic concern. Incorporation of ‘intellectual-simple nature’, which
constitutes the Cartesian foundation of metaphysics, now becomes inevitable, with the
introduction of the long- awaited goal of ontology.

Unlike the logico-philosophical tradition, which, being heavily imbued with
extensionalism, fails to understand the importance of the domain-modeling, by
structuring the taxonomic information of the world, linguistics proclaims the goal of the
intentionalism, by claiming that, ‘to attain a self-evident / self-consistent system’, one
should consider the domain of discourse, system internally; since world is not something,
lying outside, rather an emerging property of the brain. Once this point has been made
cleared, a need of ontology becomes explicit.

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