English, Department of
Department of English: Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
1971
Citation
Fifth Kansas Linguistics Conference (1971): 66-73
Abstract
What this paper has tried to do is to present some data which would have to be accounted for in an adequate semantic theory, and to suggest some of the specific elements of such a theory. A semantic theory must presuppose the existence of modal operators on every utterance, and would explain the meaning of any discourse as the relation among its medals. Logical theory has always done this, in taking every proposition of an argument as an element of the modal relations making up the argument. A semantic theory would have to specify the relations among medals which would incorporate propositions with the modality of judgment and the modality of desire into some set of allowable, or in other words interpretable, relations. Such a theory, it should be noted, would be as well a rhetorical theory. The constructions which take THAT-clauses are precisely those which have traditionally been taken as the province of rhetoric. They contain the terms of human passion and motive, of human interaction and dialogue; and they operate to make all the sentences of the language fit into the purposes of human discourse.
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Comments
Copyright 1971, Robert S. Haller. Used by permission