Bundgaard, P. (2004). the Ideal Scaffolding of Language

49THE IDEAL SCAFFOLDING OF LANGUAGE Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 4980, 2004.

2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The ideal scaffolding of language: Husserls fourth LogicalInvestigation in the light of cognitive linguistics

PEER F. BUNDGAARDCenter for Semiotic Research, University of Aarhus, Denmark (E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. One of the central issues in linguistics is whether or not language should be con-sidered a self-contained, autonomous formal system, essentially reducible to the syntacticalgorithms of meaning construction (as Chomskyan grammar would have it), or a holistic-functional system serving the means of expressing pre-organized intentional contents and thusaccessible with respect to features and structures pertaining to other cognitive subsystems orto human experience as such (as Cognitive Linguistics would have it). The latter claim de-pends critically on the existence of principles governing the composition of semantic con-tents. Husserls fourth Logical Investigation is well known as a genuine precursor forChomskyan grammar. However, I will establish the heterogeneous character of the Investi-gation and show that the whole first part of it is devoted to the exposition of a semantic com-binatorial system cognate to the one elaborated within Cognitive Linguistics. I will thus showhow theoretical results in linguistics may serve to corroborate and shed light on those partsof Husserls Fourth Investigation that have traditionally been dismissed as vague or simplyignored.

Key words: Logical investigations, cognitive linguistics, grammar, semantic configurationvs. syntactic combination, linguistic vs. pre-linguistic structure

Hier interessieren uns nur die Bedeutungen (Husserl, 190001, IV, 7)

Preamble

Edmund Husserls Fourth Logical Investigation,1 The Distinction betweenIndependent and Dependent Meaning and the Idea of Pure Grammer, con-stitutes a privileged domain for investigating what the mutual enlightenment(Gallagher 1997) of phenomenology and the empirical sciences may specifi-cally consist in. At first, this may sound surprising since the Fourth Investi-gation is not only the shortest of the six Investigations, it is also likely to bethe one that scholars have generally paid less attention to. There are a coupleof good reasons for this. First of all, it has traditionally been considered a mereapplication on a specific domain (the realm of linguistic significations) ofinsights laid down in the preceding Investigation (on the theory of wholes and

50 PEER F. BUNDGAARD

parts); the results obtained as to the specific essence of language therefore seemto have no general import (contrary to the mereological principles laid downin the Third Investigation); both these circumstances may have conveyed an,as it were, parenthetical or simply illustrative flavor to this Investigation.Finally, even though Husserl very ambitiously and rather categorically setsout to lay down the essential tenets of a pure logical grammar underpinninglanguage as such in the vein of la grammaire pure et raisonne of Port-Royal he never readdressed the issue, nor further developed his insights and as-sumptions in his following writings, at least never in terms of a pure mor-phology (Formenlehre) of language as such. The Idea of Pure Grammarthus occupies a quite confined and marginalized position in the landscape ofHusserlian phenomenology.

It is nevertheless the Investigation that has had most pervasive and mostimmediate import on empirical sciences (I even wonder if it has any parallelin modern, post-Galilean philosophy). It is hardly exaggerated to claim thatit provided the tools and the categorical prerequisites for the systematic de-velopment, if not simply the birth, of structural linguistics, and thus linguis-tics in the modem sense tout court. The great Roman Jakobson never ceasedto repeat that structural linguistics developed in Moscow and Prague in the1920s through eager readings and passionate discussions of Husserls Thirdand Fourth Investigations, and the import on linguistics of their two basicclaims:

It is possible to consider language as such as an abstract object in its own right (withoutrecurring to historical, philological, or psychological concepts). It is possible to describeand characterize the a priori concepts and laws upon which it rests, its ideal scaffold-ing (Husserl, Fourth Investigation, 14), and thus systematically expose a pure uni-versal grammar.

The laws in question govern the way linguistic parts combine, by virtue of determinatetypes of relation, into unified meaningful wholes.

The expression mutual enlightenment does indeed take on a pregnant sensein this context. Although Husserl in his Investigations evidently did providethe conceptual and categorical framework for, for example, R. Jakobsons andPrince Trubetzkoys studies in phonology, and although he is a recurrent ref-erence in, among others, K. Bhlers Theory of Language (1934) then, inreturn, the latter realize, as it were, Husserls a priori claims as regards thedomain of language. They do so by systematically specifying, illustrating, anddemonstrating how such concepts as dependence relations, relations offoundation, in short structure, are specified in language, and how they sus-

51THE IDEAL SCAFFOLDING OF LANGUAGE

tain and govern the unity of complex linguistic objects at a great many differ-ent levels. (As we will soon see, Husserls Fourth Investigation is indeed asclose as can be to being blatantly devoid of examples and elaborate analysesof concrete linguistic phenomena.)

I shall not comment any further on the intellectually passionate affinitiesbetween Husserls Third and Fourth Investigations on the one hand and struc-tural linguistics on the other. Remarkable texts have already been written onthis issue.2 In the present paper I will rather claim the actuality of the two In-vestigations with respect to a different and much more recent research pro-gram in linguistics, so-called Cognitive Linguistics (also known as CognitiveSemantics or Cognitive Grammar). Before coming to grips with the issue, letus take a brief look at this linguistic research program.

Cognitive Linguistics comprises works from authors such as M. Johnson(1987), G. Lakoff (1987), R. Langacker (19871991), Lakoff and Johnson(1980, 2000), and L. Talmy (2000). All the above authors call into questioncertain fundamental presuppositions in modem linguistics, namely: (1) thatlanguage is an autonomous, self-contained system whose formal nature canand should be studied strictly in its own terms; (2) that the core property oflanguage is its syntactic armature; (3) that the characterization of the rulesgoverning the combination of syntactic categories is to be considered an es-sential characterization of language as such (cf. Langacker 1991, chapter 1);and finally that (4) such characterization lays bare a pure, universal linguistica priori, prior to any empirically given language and grammar.

In contradistinction to this assertion of the immanent autonomy or modularityof the linguistic system, cognitive linguists hold a holistic-functional view onlanguage according to which (1) language is a cognitive subsystem charac-terized by its essential relations to other cognitive subsystems (the visual one,notably); (2) language is not adequately describable in solely syntactic termsand without reference to cognitive processing in general; (3) language isgrounded on and serves the purpose of expressing pre-linguistically organ-ized conceptual material; thus, language cannot be reduced to any purely lin-guistic a priori, or a deep-structure linguistic competence, nor to any innatealgorithm governing the combination of symbols into complex linguisticsignifications. The task of Cognitive Linguistics consists then in providingsystematic evidence for the linguistic subsystems dependency on other cog-nitive subsystems, in elucidating the nature of the pre-linguistic structures andmental processing on which it is founded, and, crucially, in showing how thelatter are grammatically specified in language.

Though the above presentation is very summary and deliberately vague(certain essential assumptions will be illustrated and corroborated in later


sections), it does, at least, suggest the existence of determinate affinities be-tween crucial assumptions in Cognitive Linguistics and well-known tenets ofHusserlian phenomenology. Among these, the most fundamental one seemsobviously to be the shared claim that predicative structure is rooted in ante-predicative structure, or that linguistically articulated signification is not ex-haustively describable in its own, grammatical terms, but is tributary to specificmeaning conferring and meaning fulfilling acts and the latters essential struc-ture. It is therefore no surprise that cognitive linguists have explicitly acknowl-edged their debts to phenomenology; yet rarely, if ever, directly to Husserl;rather, indirectly, via M. Merleau-Ponty.3

A natural way of approaching the historical and notional affinities betweenHusserls phenomenology of language and Cognitive Linguistics would there-fore be to trace back the essential claims of the latter to those investigationswhere Husserl explicitly develops hypotheses on the essentially pre-linguis-tic basis of linguistic signification and acts of signification (say, the First Logi-cal Investigation or Experience and Judgment). Here, however, my approachwill be somewhat different: I will instead take the bull by the horns and con-sider the Fourth Logical Investigation entirely devoted to determining thespecific essence of language and compare its results with fundamental hy-potheses within recent Cognitive Linguistics.

Here is how I will proceed, and why I will do so. The Fourth Investigationis first and foremost known for, if not establishing then at least asserting theexistence of a purely autonomous and essentially syntactic grammatical a pri-ori. It aims to lay down the laws governing the internal unity and formal con-gruity of linguistic parts qua tokens of syntactic categories; that is to say,independently of what language is used to symbolize or mean, and independ-ently of the organisms (embodied human beings) that use this symbolic vehi-cle to express their experiences. The claim could hardly be more opposed tothe basic assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics, and is, indeed as many schol-ars have observed the theoretical source itself of Chomskyanism in both lin-guistics and cognitive science.4

Now, in the first part of this paper, I will show that the above is only par-tially true. My claim is what only very few scholars have observed andexplicitly commented on (I only know of one: Benoist (1999, 2001)) (thatHusserl in the Fourth Investigation does not abstract one, but two grammati-cal a priori, which are not only essentially different, but also, in the frame-work of his analysis, mutually incompatible: a semantic-mereological apriori (valid for the coherent configuration of linguistic parts qua partialsignifications in a meaningful whole) and a genuinely syntactic a priori (validfor the linear combination of linguistic parts qua tokens of syntactic catego-


ries notwithstanding their specific semantics). The first a priori is devel-oped in the first nine paragraphs of the Investigation, the second in the remain-ing. The first approach has as such5 been ignored, neglected, dismissed asvague or considered as a mere preliminary exercise that only serves the func-tion of introducing to the fundamental hypotheses of the last section.

One of the aims of this paper is to rehabilitate the first approach. Initially,this implies that I will have to take exactly that detour through the realm ofmeaning that Bar-Hillel (1957, p. 369) considered superfluous in order to char-acterize and better understand Husserls precise aim at the beginning of his In-vestigation, and in order to show why this approach is fundamentally incom-patible with the syntactic approach developed in the last part of the Investigation.Next, it consists in demonstrating the richness and first and foremost, the actualrelevance of his semantic analyses, both as regards the study of languageand as regards the relation between the structure of language and cognition.

The latter task is at present much easier to fulfill: for almost thirty years,cognitive linguists and among them most particularly Leonard Talmy haveindeed provided minute analyses and systematic evidence corroborating theexistence of the very kind of structures underpinning the unity of linguisticsignifications that Husserl set out to explore in his Fourth Investigation. I willtherefore expose some of the results of this research, notably Talmys workson the both formal and semantic distinction between lexical and grammaticalelements of language, which shows striking analogies to Husserls distinctionbetween categorematic and syncategorematic expressions and independent anddependent meanings.

In his Investigation, Husserl did inaugurate a fundamental idea shared byboth Chomskyan grammar and Cognitive Linguistics: the study of languagetells us a lot about the mind. Yet, I believe that his point is much more cog-nate to the latter than to the former: if language reveals anything essential aboutthe mind, it does so not because the mind is structured like a language, buton the contrary because language, to the extent that it expresses and articu-lates what the mind has in mind, is structured like the mind.

The semantic-mereological a priori: how do partial significationsconfigure into consistent wholes?

The Fourth Investigation is most particularly known for its distinction betweensenselessness (Unsinn) and nonsense (Widersinn); that is to say, between se-quences of words that have no intrinsic meaning (for instance, formerly arewalking or), and sequences of words that do make sense whether or not they


are true, formally consistent, or refer to any possible object of whatever sort(like stubborn quantifiers or electric complex numbers). The import of thisdistinction on linguistics at the turn of the century (as well as in the followingdecades) can hardly be overestimated: it serves the crucial purpose of clearlydelimiting the genuine object of a pure logical grammar, that is to say: lin-guistics in the modern sense (whose aim is to lay down the universal charac-teristics of language). Indeed, however fundamental, logical laws establishtruth (or falsity) only on the basis of intrinsically meaningful propositions.Before it can be considered true or false, a proposition has to make sense, andcorrelatively it does make sense even if it is flagrantly false. Therefore, therules governing the compounding of partial significations and the rules gov-erning the latters formal consistency are not the same; rather, Husserl claims,there exist a priori laws, in the realm of pure significations, that establish thedistinction between what makes sense and what does not make sense, and theselaws of sense [. . .] direct logic to the abstractly possible forms of meaning,whose objective value it then becomes its first task to determine. This logicdoes by setting up the wholly different laws which distinguish a formally con-sistent from a formally inconsistent, i.e. absurd, sense (71/334).

The task of the Fourth Investigation (and linguistics in general) is, in otherwords, to define the laws governing the compounding of significations, theunity of meaning, i.e., the a priori patterns in which meanings belonging todifferent semantic categories can be united to form one meaning, instead ofproducing chaotic nonsense (49/295). These laws would then make out a puremorphology (Formenlehre) of significations, in contradistinction to the purelogical theory of validity.

Yet, however important and rich in consequences it is, this distinction ismerely evoked in the Introduction, and thoroughly developed only at a ratherlate stage of the Fourth Investigation (12 ff.). Until then, the approach is ofa quite different character. Although the issue is the same according to whichprinciples do significations combine into a meaningful whole? it is not ad-dressed in terms of laws or a priori patterns governing the linear combina-tion of linguistic parts into well-formed sequences of syntactic categories. Infact, no such syntactic considerations are displayed in the first paragraphs ofthe Investigation, and Husserls argument is certainly not guided by the dis-tinction between Unsinn and Widersinn. The guiding question is rather thefollowing: given that a complex linguistic object (say, a sentence, but a com-pound would do just as well) is made out of signifying parts, how then, accord-ing to which principles, do these parts combine so as to constitute a genuinesignificant whole, and not merely a multiplicity of significations? The tasktherefore consists in determining the types of relations between parts that


warrant their unity. To fulfill this task, Husserl applies the tools already elabo-rated in the Third Investigation and proceeds to examine whether linguisticparts are all of the same type, or whether an essential distinction should bedrawn between them: the distinction between independent and dependentcontents, the one Husserl following C. Stumpf found to hold generally be-tween parts of a whole in the Third Investigation.6

As is well known, independent parts (or Stcke, pieces) are such that theycan be considered in isolation, whereas dependent parts (or moments) mustnecessarily occur with other parts of a certain sort in a whole of a determinatesort. Thus, a horses head, its tail, its left front leg are such detachable pieces,whereas its color and shape are non-detachable moments of the whole (nocolor without extension and vice versa). In this respect moments of a wholeplay a fundamental role since they are necessarily related to other parts of adeterminate sort in a whole of a determinate sort they are founded on themin relations of either unilateral or mutual dependence: they are, as it were,crystallizations of the system of relations that bind the parts into one consist-ent whole.7 This is what Husserl applies to language and meaning: grantedthat linguistic objects, word-complexes, are made out of different significantparts, we can now ask whether all parts have the same kind of signification(in this case sentences are summative wholes of significant parts) or whetherit is possible to distinguish between different types of signification, just as itis possible to distinguish between dependent and independent contents, mo-ments and pieces (in which case, sentences or complex linguistic objects areinternally articulated in virtue of determinate types of relations that it wouldbe possible to characterize).

Husserl emphatically adopts the latter alternative and proceeds to a three-step determination of what is meant by dependence in the realm of lin-guistic significations. First he draws an exclusively grammatical distinctionbetween two general types of linguistic parts in discourse; then he leads thisdifference back to a genuinely semantic distinction; and ultimately he foundsthe linguistic semantic distinction on a cognitive distinction, i.e., a generaldistinction between types of meaningful contents given in intentional acts.

Here is how the argument goes: To begin with, Husserl refers to the oldmedieval parsing of the elements of discourse into two general subsystems:categorematic and syncategorematic expressions. The distinction is originallypurely grammatical: sentences are traditionally said to be compounded bywords that have a proper signification (generally, nouns, verbs, and adjectiveswere considered as such), called categorematica, and words (like prepositions,conjunctions, particles, pronouns, as well as grammatical units such as inflex-ions, prefixes, suffixes, etc.) that only take on a signification together with


other words; the latter are called syncategorematica, or co-signifying words.Husserl now presents the following alternative: (1) The distinction is indeedmerely grammatical, i.e., only relative to the particular make-up of each em-pirical language. In that case, only categorematic words are linked to repre-sentations proper (they express the latter), while syncategorematic wordsmerely play a role at a grammatical level, i.e., they only have a function asconnectors within the linguistic system of expression, but they do not expressany meaning whatsoever. If so, the syncategorematic words which help tobuild up [the] expression are, properly speaking, quite meaningless, only thewhole expression really has a meaning (54/304). (2) The completeness orincompleteness of a linguistic expression is a reflection of a completeness orincompleteness at an underlying semantic level. In this case, syncategorematicado not simply play a functional-connecting role at a grammatical level ofexpression, they have a signification in their own right, yet their significationis not a complete or independent one, but an incomplete and dependent one.

Husserl adopts the latter solution: categorematica are semantic pieces of alinguistic whole, syncategorematica are semantic moments of a linguisticwhole. The grammatical distinction is an expression of an essential semanticdistinction, strictly analogous to the distinction between dependent and inde-pendent contents of intentional acts. The answer is adopted on the grounds ofthe following claims, which show not only the comprehensive character ofHusserl's approach (it addresses the essence of its object, language, at threedistinct and interrelated levels: a grammatical, a semantic, and a cognitive one),but also the kind of mereological principle governing the unity of complexlinguistic objects that he aims at laying bare. Let us consider the two funda-mental assumptions.

The first claim follows of course directly from the attribution of depend-ent significations to syncategorematic expressions: linguistic complex objectsare simply tokens of complex objects in general, thus the laws governing theirunity are the same as those established within the general theory of wholesand parts. Parts are combined with each other by virtue of their essentialdependent or independent contents, i.e., by virtue of the type of connectionto other parts they require. The a priori governing the realm of linguisticsignifications is therefore a mereological a priori:

Having called syncategorematic meanings dependent, we have already said where wethink the essence of such meanings lies. In our enquiries into dependent contents in gen-eral, we have given a general determination of the concept of dependence: it is this samedependence that we have to recognize in the field of meaning; Dependent contents, westated above (Third Investigation, 57), are contents not able to exist alone, but only asparts of more comprehensive wholes. This inability [of dependent significations to exist


alone] has its a priori governing ground in the specific essences of the contents in ques-tion. Each dependence points to a law to the effect that a content of the sort in question,e.g. sort can exist only in the context of a whole G(AB...M), where B...M stand for de-terminate sorts of content. Determinate, we said, since no law merely asserts connec-tion between the sort A and any [arbitrary] sort of [context] [. . .] Law involves specificdeterminateness of context: dependent and independent variables have spheres limited byfixed generic or specific characters. We have mainly employed as examples the concretethings of sensuous intuition. We could, however, have brought in other fields, those ofact-experiences and their abstract contents (5859/311312).

The argument is conducted from an entirely a priori point of view and, at thislevel, it is quite clear. To the extent that we can identify dependent parts withina linguistic whole, and to the extent that such parts call for completion, andnot just any completion, but of a determinate kind, there must exist laws gov-erning the way in which such parts should be completed, with what kind ofparts, and in what types of connection. That is to say, just like dependent con-tents in general, dependent significations are essentially prior or more funda-mental than independent significations, since they point at or imply the lawsgoverning their completion.8

However, if we remember that here Husserl is engaged in a linguistic in-quiry, we may be entitled to ask for specifications of this semantic scaffold-ing of language: what does it mean for a linguistic content, by virtue of itsspecific essence, to require a context of a determinate sort? In fact, it shouldbe easy to illustrate this point within the linguistic domain in view of the factthat in the Third Investigation Husserl provided enlightening examples of whathe meant by dependent content, relations of foundation, and relations of uni-lateral or mutual dependence within the domain of intuition. Yet, in the FourthInvestigation, there is no linguistic counterpart to, say, the relation betweencolor and extension such as it is minutely analyzed in the preceding Investi-gation. In other words, it is quite difficult to tell how exactly the laws invokedapply to the domain of linguistic significations, and, certainly, how laws gov-erning the relation between contents of intuition should rule the unity of lin-guistic parts.

If we now turn to the second claim underpinning Husserls argument, wesee that it in fact clearly specifies what is meant by linguistic content andits specific essence. The main tenet of the argument is functional. Languageserves the purpose of expressing representations or experiences (whether ac-tually on-going, recalled or imagined). Now, experiences are themselves madeout of a great many partial experiences, combined into a whole or intended asconnected in a specific way. Husserls point here is simply that if languagehad not disposed of the necessary means to express both partial experiences


or representations and the specific way in which these are intended to com-bine, it would be incapable of expression, and thus not be language:

Language has not been lead by chance or caprice to express presentations9 with namesinvolving many words, but by the need to express suitably a plurality of mutually coher-ing part-presentations, and dependent presentational forms, within the enclosed self-suf-ficiency of a presentational unity. Even a dependent moment, an intentional form ofcombination through which, e.g., two presentations unite in a third, can find semanticexpression, it can determine the peculiar meaning-intention of a word or complex of words.Clearly, we may say that if presentations, expressible thoughts of any sort whatever, areto have their faithful reflections in the sphere of meaning-intentions, then there must be asemantic form which corresponds to each presentational form. This is in fact an a prioritruth. And if the verbal resources of language are to be a faithful mirror of all meaningspossible a priori, then language must have grammatical forms at its disposal which givedistinct expression, i.e., sensibly distinct symbolization, to all distinguishable meaning-forms (5455/304305)

It is worthwhile to stress once again that the approach is semantic through andthrough. The unity of complex linguistic wholes is defined in terms of semanticrelations of foundations between dependent significations and those specificcontexts of meaning in which they must occur.10 What is more, in the veinof the First Investigation, the approach is semantic twice rather than once:syncategorematic expressions have genuine significations (which must im-ply that these are amenable to semantic description); the significations arethemselves correlates to certain pre-linguistic11 contents of meaning acts thatin turn constitute a complex, configured whole of partial meaning acts, so thatthe dependence or independence of each signification is a result of its capac-ity or incapacity to constitute the full, entire meaning of a concrete act ofmeaning. In short, as Husserl concludes, a linguistic (dependent or independ-ent) content and its specific content is an articulation of the content of a pre-linguistic meaning act. Syncategorematic expressions are thus linguistic formsthat specify grammatically the content inherent to a specific mode of inten-tion (or, as quoted above: they are grammatical forms that express intentionalforms of combination of partial representations):

A meaning, accordingly, may be called independent when it can constitute the full, en-tire meaning of a concrete act of meaning, dependent, when this is not the case. It canthen only be realized in a dependent part-act in a concrete act of meaning, it can onlyachieve concreteness in relation to certain other complementary meanings, it can only existin a meaningful whole. The dependence of meaning qua meaning thus defined determines,in our view, the essence of the syncategorematica (59/312).

Once again this claim is not sustained by any example or concrete analysis ofhow precisely dependent expressions and significations specify and articu-


late pre-linguistic dependent contents of expressible thoughts or intentionalmodes of combining partial representations. Husserl does indeed claim thatany example proves the point that syncategorematica express such inten-tional forms of combination, but no linguistic example in particular is recruitedto corroborate this assertion.

We may now sum up Husserls claims concerning the unity of meaning quameaning:

Husserl sets out from the purely grammatical distinction between categor-ematic and syncategorematic expressions.

He founds the grammatical distinction on a semantic distinction betweenindependent and dependent significations. So doing, he asserts the exist-ence of two general subsystems in language that each contribute its type ofmeaning. The categorematic (or lexical) subsystem contributes independ-ent significations that can be apprehended per se; the syncategorematic (orgrammatical) one contributes significations that are unbounded, vague,and call for completion. Due to the laws that govern the configurationsof parts into wholes, independent parts (or moments) require not just anywhole whatsoever, for they are not amenable to all sorts of completion; ratherthey require completion of a specific sort. Though Husserl does not con-clude this himself, it follows from the above that the meaning contributedby syncategorematic expressions is the general semantic frame or seman-tic structure within which they are to appear.

Moreover, linguistic significations are defined as correlates of meaningsintended in specific meaning acts. Dependent and independent significationsare counterparts of dependent and independent contents of meaning acts,so that the structure governing the combination of significations at a lin-guistic level is a structure already ruling the configuration of pre-linguisticintentional acts. Thus, syncategorematic expressions are not merely gram-matical or syntactic connectors, they are faithful reflections of inten-tional forms of combination through which partial representations uniteinto one complex representation.

Finally, it should be stressed that the object language as such, which isassessed in this functional approach, is not accessed as a self-contained,autonomous object, i.e., by virtue of its specific essence qua that kind ofobject, but rather by virtue of its being an object whose essential functionis to be a symbolic vehicle, a means of expressing, faithfully reflecting, andrearticulating already formed, structured, or configured pre-linguistic con-tents of meaning acts.


As already mentioned, the Fourth Investigation inflects from its course around10, i.e., exactly after having reached this stage of the argument. Before ex-posing what direction this inflection takes, it may be useful to spell out whatproblems follow from this attempt at a semantic-conceptual definition of theunity of linguistic meaning. It may also serve as an explanation of why so fewscholars have noticed the heterogeneous character of the Fourth Investigation,and, a fortiori, why so few (if any?) scholars have appreciated Husserls at-tempt to develop a semantic combinatorial system on mereological grounds.The problems are basically the following:

(1) Husserl provides absolutely no systematic examples for the fact thatsyncategorematic expressions are understood, even when they occur in iso-lation; they are felt to carry definite moments of meaning-content, momentsthat look forward to a certain completion which, though it may be indetermi-nate materially, is formally determined together with the content in question,and is circumscribed and governed by it (56/301). The absence of exampleshas obviously had serious drawbacks for the argument, since no one seems tohave shared Husserls confidence in the self-evidence of his point. None ofthe linguistic theories that have either explicitly acknowledged their debts toHusserl or been indirectly influenced by him have elaborated these semanticaspects of his considerations. On the contrary, at least until the beginning ofthe 1980s, they have remained a sort of terra obscura for linguistic theory.We will see in a while that the situation has radically changed.

(2) The other critical point concerns the nature of the grammatical a priorisuch as Husserl defines it in the first nine paragraphs. The aim was to laybare the unity of meaning qua meaning, independently of it being logicallyconsistent or not; the issue was thus the internal formal unity of a specificsymbolic system, language. Now, although Husserl does establish essentialdistinctions between the components of this system, and even if he does as-sign essentially different semantic functions to these components that canbe defined independently of psychology or other empirical sciences, and,finally, even though he does address and answer the question about whatprinciples govern the combination of these element into coherent wholes these principles clearly exceed and are by no means reducible to the linguisticsphere qua linguistic. In short: if the Fourth Investigation as it has oftenbeen said, and rightly so is an application of the insights achieved in theThird Investigation, then the grammatical a priori allegedly achievedthrough this application is in fact a sub-mereological a priori which is ulti-mately governed by the very same synthetic or intuitive a priori ruling thecombination of perceptual parts in intuition. The tools with which we elu-cidate the internal unity of linguistic meaning complexes are identical to the


ones with which we elucidate all other sorts of complex objects, such asobjects in visual and acoustic perception.12

(3) Finally: in the first nine paragraphs, Husserl has proposed a theory ofhow contents of linguistic expressions are configured into consistentwholes. He has assumed that certain types of grammatical expressions(syncategorematica) specify certain intentional forms of combination (depend-ent contents of meaning acts), so that founding relations between partialrepresentations can be faithfully reflected in language. Yet, he has notconsidered nor a fortiori elucidated the apparently crucial property of a sym-bolic system like language, namely, that expressions must follow each otherin a determinate way, according to determinate forms of linear distribution,in order to make sense: what is given as configured, n-dimensional contentsin experience must be redistributed linearly in determinate, one-dimensionalcombinations of expressions; and this linear constraint seems to constitute thespecific difference and thus essence of language, the genuine grammatical apriori.

It is exactly this grammatical misre that Husserl sets out to remedy in theremaining paragraphs of his Investigation. The issue now is not how contentsconfigure into consistent wholes, but how specific categories of expressionscombine into formally well-formed sentences. What was formulated in termsof the ordered co-existence of semantic parts according to essential laws ofunity is now formulated in terms of the linear combination of syntactic cat-egories.

The syntactic a priori from semantic configuration to syntacticconnectivity

The attempt to satisfy the demand for a pure grammatical a priori implies aprogressive, yet radical, redetermination of the notion form of combinationor connective form. Here is how the re-construal is fulfilled in 10, A pri-ori laws governing combinations of meanings.

(1) If there exist dependent significations, there exist a priori laws regu-lating their combination into new meanings (61/317). Insofar as dependencemeans need of completion, the laws in question regulate the meanings needof completion by further meanings; i.e., they indicate the forms and kindsof context into which such dependent significations must be fitted (ibid.).The argument is, at this stage, undistinguishable from the mereological-se-mantic approach in the preceding paragraphs.

(2) No parts can be assembled without connective forms (or momentsimplying foundational relations to other parts) governed by laws of combina-


tion that restrict or prescribe the kinds of combinations that are possible forthe combining members in question. In other words, each sphere has its ownmaterial a priori governing the combination of its members: In no sphere isit possible to combine items of any and every kind by way of any and everyform: the sphere of items sets a priori limits to the number of combinatorialforms, and prescribes the general laws for filling them in (62/317). The pointis simply that in each material sphere (or generic family) of objects, we willfind rules proper to that sphere, which govern the connection of the kind ofparts we find in that sphere. In the sphere of, say, intuition, we will for exam-ple find determinate dependence relations between color and extension; thus,in the sphere of meaning, we must expect to find a priori rules that specifi-cally govern the combination of linguistic elements.

It is at exactly this point (62 ff./317ff.) that the change of scope intervenes.From now on, and abruptly so, the approach is exclusively linguistic or gram-matical: the combination of linguistic meanings has been cut off from its foun-dation on the configuration of intentional acts and their contents (for thesebelong to another material sphere with other characteristic material a priorilaws). In other words, the form of combination that Husserl earlier referredto as intentional, and thus pre- or extra-linguistic, is now construed as apurely linguistic connector, independent of any act-intentions or relation toany extra-linguistic object. Here is how Husserl now develops the mereologyof linguistic units:

(a) What characterizes the combination of linguistic meanings is that theymust be connected in specific, antecedently determined ways: only certainsequences of words make sense, others, even including the very same words,yield only a heap of meanings, never a single meaning (IVth LI: 62/318).Now, just as the relation of mutual dependence between color and extension,is not one that concerns one specific quality and one specific surface qua, say,exactly this red nuance and exactly this apple surface, but one that concernsthe genera of which they are the lowest differences (color, extension), thelaws governing the combination of linguistic elements do not apply to the lin-guistic units qua specific meanings, but to the essential genera (wesentlichenGattungen), i.e., the semantic categories (Bedeutungskategorien) to whichthey belong.13 So, if a sentence like without cherished I alphabet an vowelsdoes not make sense, it is not due to the incompatibility of the particular se-mantics of these specific words, nor to the words themselves, but to the factthat these words as instances of specific semantic categories do not combineaccording to the rules that govern the combination of semantic categories.

(b) Husserls sketch of a pure logical grammar rides rather heavily on thisnotion of semantic category. It indicates the following fundamental princi-


ple: whenever we have a well-formed expression, say, This tree is green, wecan, by means of formal abstraction, obtain the corresponding pure syntac-tic form14 this S is p. Now, this ideal form can be instantiated in indefinitelymany, but still evidently restricted ways. The variability is indefinitely richinsofar as any nominal matter say, this carved square root, this hungrybikini, etc. can instantiate S (or substitute this tree in the former example)without affecting the grammatical integrity of the sentence; consequently, anyadjectival matter say agnostic or skilled can instantiate p (or replacegreen in the example). On the other hand, the variability is strongly con-strained: a token of one categorical class can only be replaced by a token ofthe same categorical class. In this blue raven is green, the integrity of thecomplex linguistic form remains invariant, whereas in this careless is green,it has disintegrated due to an illegal exchange of syntactic categories and thusan illegal combination of categories which is not supported by any correspond-ing pure form of meaning.

(3) The conclusion is now quite simple: a construction of any sort makessense linguistically (notwithstanding its logical consistence) if and only if itis sustained by (or is an instantiation of) a pure syntactic form combining se-mantic categories in a predetermined way. The result of this is a research pro-gram for the pure logical grammar whose essential and foundational principleHusserl by now considers as evidently established:

The task of an accomplished science of meanings would be to investigate the law-gov-erned, essence-bound structure of meanings and the laws of combination and modifica-tion of meaning which depend upon these, also to reduce such laws to the least number ofindependent elementary laws. We should obviously also need to track down the primitivemeaning-patterns and their inner structures, and, in connection with these, to fix the purecategories of meaning which circumscribe the sense and range of the indeterminates thevariables in a sense exactly analogous to that of mathematics that occur in such laws(68/328)

Yet, from this passage, as well as from others, it is not difficult to identify twoin fact quite different dimensions of the exposed research program. On theone hand, Husserl posits the necessity of establishing the laws of combina-tion; in the light of the first paragraphs of his investigation, this demand canhardly be a surprise: given that syncategorematic expressions, and thus de-pendent significations, are unsaturated, they must be combined with otherexpressions, and since combinations, by essence, are not random, the task mustconsist in establishing the lawful way in which meanings compound. On theother hand, however, this demand has obviously become obsolete by the re-cently introduced notion of ideal Satzform, the pure form of meaning, which


constitutes an a priori or pre-formatted syntactic template (like S is p); ob-solete, because if such a syntactic template or primitive meaning-pattern exists, it has already solved the problem of combining partial meanings:whatever appears in such a form appears as ipso facto combined by virtue ofthat form. Consequently, the other, and prevailing, aspect of the research pro-gram announced by Husserl, consists in tracking down and circumscribingthe number of essential primitive syntactic forms that predetermine the essen-tial modes of combination of semantic (read: syntactic) categories. Consider:

Our first task, therefore, in a purely logical form-theory of meanings, is to lay down theprimitive forms of meaning with the requisite purity just described. We must fix the primi-tive forms of independent meanings, of complete propositions with their internal articu-lations, and the structures contained in such articulations. We must fix, too, the primitiveforms of compounding and modifications permitted by the essence of different categoriesof possible elements (. . .). After this, we must systematically survey a boundless multi-tude of further forms, all derivable by way of repeated compounding or modification (69/329330).

Here is not the place to comment on the notion of formal analyticity whichHusserl draws on in his sketch of a pure logical grammar (in contradistinc-tion to the synthetic a priori on which he grounds his analysis of dependentand independent significations).15 Neither shall I expose the fundamental prob-lem of circumscribing the inventory of genuinely primitive syntactic formsand of establishing the fundamental generative principles that enable the pro-duction of new, empirically given sentences from these primitive forms.16 In-stead I shall simply stress the essential and both unrelated and unarticulated differences between the semantic approach prevailing in the first 9 para-graphs of the Investigation and the purely syntactic approach dominating thelast paragraphs. These differences can be boiled down to the following three:

1. As already commented on, the laws of combination required by the first,semantic, approach are made obsolete by the second, syntactic, approachto the extent that whatever linguistic parts appear in a meaningful sentencethese are always already combined by virtue of the ideal syntactic formsustaining the sentence in question. In other words, the distinction betweendependent and independent meanings is no longer operative. In this ap-proach, there is no point in parsing linguistic parts into dependent momentsand independent pieces. All parts are indeed dependent with respect to thewhole. One may of course proceed to classify parts according to the semanticcategories they fall under, but this distinction is not mereological in the firstsense; that is to say, it does not concern the nature and function of the parts


qua parts in a given whole. The primary primitive object is not the parts,nor their types of mutual relations, but the very syntactic gestalt itself. Thismeans that the parts are only accessible insofar as they occur in a pre-de-termined whole, a primitive syntactic form, which qua primitive and pureis naturally indecomposable and irreducible to either its parts or the rela-tions between them: the form is in and of itself the very determination ofthis relation. In the first, semantic account, however, the unity of the wholeis certainly claimed to rely on specific dependent meanings, which couldbe strictly defined as figural or unifying moments: i.e., parts that do not onlyrequire being combined with other parts, but also specify the (semantic)nature of the combination required. The difference between these two ap-proaches seems thus characterizable in terms of gestalt theory: in the firstapproach, linguistic wholes are composed of genuine parts (dependent andindependent), and their internal order or structure can, as it were, be tracedback to the dependent parts; in the second account, no parts are genuine, allare abstractly distinguishable parts, variables in the already constitutedsyntactic form itself.17

2. In both approaches, laws of combination are invoked. In the first approach,these are specified as laws governing the configuration of parts, by virtueof their meaning, in what could be called an n-dimensional quality space;in the second, however, they are specified as laws of connectivity govern-ing the linear distribution of parts by virtue of the syntactic category to whichthey belong.

3. Finally, the object of the first approach is assessed through its being essen-tially a vehicle, serving the purpose of expressing and re-articulating alreadyformed Vorstellungen or expressible thoughts, whereas in the secondapproach it is assessed as an autonomous, self-contained symbolic system,by virtue of its own symbolic congruity, independently of what it expresses.

Having arrived at this stage, i.e., having characterized the two approaches andspelled out their differences, the time has now come to provide some evidencethat would justify the relevance of the first, semantic approach. In other words,I will try to show what a genuinely semantic combinatorial system underpin-ning the composition of linguistic significations consists in, and more spe-cifically with respect to Husserl I will supply a selection of examplesthat, I believe, convincingly illustrate what it means for a dependent mean-ing to require a semantic whole of a determinate sort. Questions like thesehave already been addressed for a great many years within linguistics, andI will therefore simply compare these theoretical results with Husserls keynotions:18


Examples of grammatical expressions that specify intentional forms ofcombination

Consider the following case:19 a complex representation (Vorstellung) com-posed by two partial representations, say, (1) They are married, (2) They donot live together, and an intentional form of combination of (1) and (2). If arepresentation exists that combines (1) and (2) into one complex representa-tion, then, Husserl claimed, there must be a semantic correlate to that globalrepresentation, and to the semantic form there must be a specific grammati-cal correlate, i.e., a way of faithfully expressing the intended meaning. Thisentails that not only the partial representations, but also the intentional formof combination should be expressible. Consider now the following possiblecombinations of (1) and (2):(a) They are married, BUT they do not live together.(b) They are married, AND they do not live together.(c) They are married, OR they do not live together.In each case, the partial representations remain the same, yet the global mean-ing varies considerably according to the way in which the relation between(1) and (2) is intended and expressed. Conjunctions like the above clearly donot merely laterally combine one partial representation (or proposition) withthe following, they also express the very way such representations are intendedto relate. (They are the exact linguistic correlate to the intentional form ofcombination Husserl referred to above.) This justifies the characterizationof the meaning of a syncategorematic expression in mereological terms as thefigural moment that combines partial significations into a specific semanticwhole. In other words as we shall see in more detail below the meaningcontributed by dependent contents, like but, is not merely a block of signi-fication added to already given blocks of signification in a summative wholeof significations; rather, the meaning of a dependent content is the very glo-bal relation it expresses between the partial representations it combines. Thus,the meaning of but could be characterized as follows: in a complex con-struction compounded with but, whatever is to the left of but and what-ever is to the right of it are intended as contrasting or conflicting contentsin some respect; they take on this additional, and crucial, semantic value byvirtue of the dependent content that combines them. Thus, dependent contentsdo not simply require determinate contexts; in fact, their meaning is the kindof semantic whole into which the partial significations are combined. Thissemantic whole could in the case of but be diagrammed as a schematic func-tion (in Freges sense) like this: X > [but] < Y.


To get a firmer hold on how this semantic organization differs from syn-tactic combination, consider the following: granted that independent meaningscontribute a schematic whole of a determinate sort (yet, vaguely, incompletely,i.e., without any specific arguments), we can claim that whatever specificmeaning but assumes in a given sentence (depending on the independent parts(or arguments) it combines), it necessarily implies a relation of contrast,conflict, or tension between its relata. It thus demands completion of aspecific sort, namely, through arguments that must in one way or another beconstrued as conflicting. Consider at present what consequences this has forpure logical grammar. If it is the case that, for example, but requires com-pletion that satisfies its general schematic meaning of contrast, then we cana priori state: if XYZ in XYZ but XYZ means exactly the same thing in eachof its occurrences, then the expression is agrammatical for essential reasons. Itis therefore an analytical fact that he is a man but he is a man is agrammatical(or semantically ill-formed) if by he is a man I mean the same thing twice,because the law governing the completion of the dependent signification hasnot been satisfied.

This is of course not the case from a purely syntactic perspective. Here wecan apply our method of formal abstraction on a sentence like he is a priest,but he is a sinner and thus obtain an ideal syntactic form combining certainsyntactic categories (or classes of variables), such as He is [Nominal matter],CONJ. He is [Nominal Matter] and from there, through substitution, we canconstruct a perfectly congruous sentence like He is a man, but he is a man.In other words, the difference between the two combinatorial systems is sodeep that what in one system epitomizes grammaticality is in the other a pa-rade example of agrammaticality.20

In the next section, I will provide more examples, all borrowed from Talmy(2000), in order to give a more substantial characterization of the configurationalsemantic system underpinning the organization of linguistic significations.Needless to say that it is far beyond the scope of this paper to propose a sys-tematic presentation of Talmys work in particular and Cognitive Linguisticsin general. I will therefore only include material that is directly relevant forthe present purpose: i.e., evidence that shows how the general mereologicalprinciples of semantic organization, purported by Husserl, can be found to holdin language.

Talmys closed-class semantics

Talmys work shows several striking analogies to Husserls Fourth Investi-gation. In the very first lines of the first chapter of his monumental Toward a


Cognitive Semantics (2000), he too calls attention to a universal, purely for-mal design feature of language, namely, that it is composed by two subsys-tems: a grammatical and a lexical one. The lexical one, which is co-extensivewith Husserls categorematica, consists of open word classes that are richin members and readily augmentable (i.e., roots of nouns, verbs, and adjec-tives). The grammatical one, co-extensive with Husserls syncategorematica,is made out of closed word classes that have few members and are not sub-ject to or likely to undergo any variation (all other word classes preposi-tions, conjunctions, verb particles, etc. but also all sorts of tense and casemarkers, suffixes, prefixes, specific syntactic constructions, and grammati-cal categories as such).

Next, Talmy, just like Husserl, attributes specific semantic functions to eachsubsystem. A complex linguistic expression (e.g., a sentence) serves the pur-pose of articulating and thus evoking in the listener a specific experientialcomplex or a cognitive representation (Talmy 2000, p. 22). The point isnow that elements of both subsystems represent conceptual material i.e.,have a meaning but not the same type of material. Keeping in mind that lan-guage according to Husserl must dispose of semantic forms to express not onlybounded contents of meaning acts, but also the way these are intended to re-late (their intentional form of combination), it is easy to appreciate the af-finities to Talmys conception:

The grammatical and lexical subsystems in a sentence seem generally to specify differentportions of a cognitive representation (CR). Together, the grammatical elements of a sen-tence determine the majority of the structure of the CR, while the lexical elements togethercontribute the majority of its contents. The grammatical specifications in a sentence, thus,provide a conceptual framework or, imagistically, a skeletal structure or scaffolding forthe conceptual material that is lexically specified (Talmy 2000, p. 21).

Such assumptions, as well as Husserls in his first approach, clearly call intoquestion the task assignment dogma within linguistics, according to whichperception provides referential access to objects, whereas language combinesthe symbols referring to these representations exclusively in terms of its ownlaws of linear composition.21 Rather, it claims that linguistic representation isnot a two-relata affair between linguistic structure proper and reference ob-jects, but a three-relata affair, so that language, thanks to certain expressiveand semantic properties, not only refers to a scene, but also articulates struc-tured modes of experiencing or conceptualizing this referential scene. Thecrucial claim here is then strictly like Husserls: closed-class elements playa privileged role (as dependent meanings) since they make out the inventoryof semantic forms through which the structures of a complex representation


are specified, or, to put it differently, through which a referent scene is ex-pressed linguistically such as it is intended in experience. Talmy thus concludesthat a study of semantics as a genuine combinatorial system in language mustbe a systematic study of the kind of structure specified by closed-class ele-ments, since they are in charge of the conceptual organization within lan-guage:

The present chapter advances the position that this set of grammatically specified notionscollectively constitutes the fundamental conceptual structuring system of language. Thatis, this crosslinguistically select set of grammatically specified concepts provides the basicschematic framework for conceptual organization within the cognitive system of language(Talmy 2000, p. 21).

I will now turn directly to the examples that may serve to answer our initialquestions:

1. If to require a determinate sort of whole implies that a dependent mean-ing (or a closed-class element) in fact contributes the kind of structural wholein terms of which the linguistic parts are combined, how is this structuralwhole or schema to be identified and characterized?

2. How can it be shown that dependent meanings express and specify inten-tional forms of combination, as Husserl had it, or conceptual structure,as Talmy calls it?

Consider the following examples:

1.(a) The cat is on the car(b) The cat is in the car(c) The cat is two feet from the car

2.(a) The boat is on the water(b) The boat is in the water

Traditionally, prepositions, syncategorematic expressions, are considered asserving a binding function within a clause for instance, by specifying therelation in which one referential element stands to another. Yet in 1 (a,b,c),the prepositions do not simply specify a spatial relation between two referen-tial objects, they also, and crucially so, express a specific conceptualizationof, in this case, the car, which in (a) is conceptualized as a surface (with all


other properties abstracted away); in 1 (b) as a volume or a container (withall other properties abstracted away); and in 1 (c) as a point (with all otherproperties abstracted away). What the examples reveal is that a specific modeof perceptually intending the car is specified by the prepositions, namely tothe effect that only certain of its spatial properties are referred to, while allothers are neglected.22

The second set of examples illustrate the same phenomenon, but with anadditional and quite essential specifying feature. 2 (a,b) belong indeed to afamily of expressions that refer to exactly the same state of affairs, but alter-nate in the way they schematize it. So 2 (a) and 2 (b) of course differ by virtueof the schematic content of the prepositions and the way they idealize thewater as a surface and a volume, respectively. Yet these alternatingschematizations are best construed as yet another specification, namely, ofpoint of view, on specifies a distal point of view from which the water is givenin experience as a homogeneous plane (no significant or perceivable move-ment of waves, etc.), whereas in specifies a proximal point of view fromwhich the water is given in experience with its mass and voluminous charac-ter (waves licking the hull, etc.).

Examples of alternations in schematization are indeed particularly inter-esting. They display obvious semantic differences in expressions referring toexactly the same objective reference scene. Such differences are therefore notexplainable solely with respect to the reference object (it remains invariant),nor with respect to the full-fleshed semantics of the opened class words em-ployed (these are basically the same),23 rather they should be explained withrespect to the describable properties of the experiential act in which the refer-ential object is intentionally given. In short, the whole combinatorial systemin charge of the semantic organization of language clearly exceeds the strictdomain of language and grammar. Basic semantic features displayed in lan-guage are simply not assessable in purely linguistic terms. They are essen-tially grounded on characteristics and structures of perception and intentionalexperience as such.24 Thus, in cases of alternations in schematization, the dif-ferences are readily and sometimes quite subtly reducible to gestalt dif-ferences between figure/ground structures in the experienced referent scene,intentional distribution of attention to a reference scene, perspective, andmodes of perceptual apprehension. In each of these cases as we shall verybriefly see below the pre-linguistic organizing structures are linguisticallyspecified by closed-class elements and their dependent meaning (be they sin-gle words or specific syntactic constructions).

Semantic differences in linguistic expressions due to figure/ground inver-sions are obvious in cases like a is parallel to b vs. b is parallel to a a re-


sembles b vs. b resembles a, a beats b vs. b is beaten by a (cf. Talmy 2000,volume 1, chapters 5 and 6, for a comprehensive exposition of figure/groundstructure in language). Cases where semantic differences amount to differencesin modes of experientially intending the situation or in perceptually appre-hending the referent scene are particularly interesting (they have been thor-oughly analyzed by Langacker [1991, chapter 3]).

Consider the following:

3 (a) The troops went across the desert3 (b) The troops crossed the desert

Here the basic semantic contents of the preposition across and the verb crossare the same. Langacker (1991, pp. 78 ff.) suggests, however, that there is adifference. According to him the verbal and the prepositional expressions re-fer to distinct ways of intentionally accessing the components of a complexreferent scene. This difference is not specified by any contents (schematic ornot) of the words used, but rather by virtue of the notional contents of the gram-matical categories used. The claim is, then, that a preposition implies a sum-mary scanning in which the various facets of a situation examined incumulative fashion, so that progressively a more and more complex con-ceptualization is built up; once the entire scene has been scanned, all facetsof it are simultaneously available and cohere as a single gestalt (Langacker1991, p. 78). On the other hand, a verb (here: cross) implies a sequentialscanning, in which the various phases of an evolving situation are exam-ined serially, in non-cumulative fashion; hence the conceptualization is dy-namic, in the sense that its contents change from one instant to the next(Langacker 1991, pp. 7879). In other words, subtle but linguistically perva-sive differences between parallel expressions like the above are explainablein terms of differences in (1) mode of conceptualization (scanning), and interms of (2) the internal structure of the latters intentional correlate. Thus in3 (a) the process and its components are intended as a complex atemporal ge-stalt, with no specific focus on the distinct phases of the figures (the troops)movement; whereas in 3 (b) the scene is intended with specific focus on thetransient movement, from phase to phase, of the troops.25

The above presentation does not of course pretend to be either systematicor, a fortiori, exhaustive. It is intended as a mere general survey of certainconceptual contents specified by language, ones that linguistic structure istuned in, as it were, to express. It does, however, help us better understandwhat exactly Husserl anticipated in his sketch of a mereological semantic sys-tem of language. It supplies us with concrete examples of how syncategorematic


expressions and their dependent meanings are linked to or contribute to de-terminate sorts of semantic wholes, i.e., general schematic frames in terms ofwhich the component elements of complex linguistic expression are eitherconceptualized or combined. It demonstrates how extra-linguistic cognitiveor intentional features such as perspective, point of view, and attention are notonly capable of being expressed linguistically, but also play a fundamentalrole in organizing linguistic contents that are not explainable in traditionalintra-linguistic terms. Finally, it provides convincing evidence for the exist-ence of what Jackendoff (1987) called the intermediary level where languagestructure is compatible with perception (exactly the level whose existenceHusserl claimed on a priori grounds) the level of conceptual structure. Inthis respect Cognitive Linguistics in general and Talmys or Langackers worksin particular are not strictly linguistic theories; they are comprehensive cog-nitive theories that study and lay bare (1) the relative dependence of linguis-tic structure on pre-linguistic structure; (2) the essential tenets of pre-linguisticstructure; and, finally, (3) the design features of the linguistic system that makeit capable of systematically expressing and re-articulating such a conceptualstructure.26

I will now conclude this study with a couple of epistemological remarksand some minor conjectures as regards the essence of language.

Concluding remarks

Research in Cognitive Linguistics is one among several examples of the factthat progression in the empirical sciences does, occasionally, elucidate un-clear or vague elements of philosophical thought, or that it does provide theevidence that completes only partially or incompletely developed philosophi-cal hypotheses. That Cognitive Linguistics serves this function with regardsto Husserls Fourth Investigation is in a way quite natural if we consider thefact that Husserlian phenomenology as I briefly commented on in my Pre-amble indirectly or through sedimentation constitutes a genuine source forseveral of the fundamental hypotheses purported by this recent research pro-gram in linguistics, the most crucial among these being the idea that the scaf-folding of language construed as a means of combining linguistically whathas already been composed intentionally is determinable in terms of a se-mantic combinatorial system.

Now, this semantic approach to language has not been popular in linguis-tics (at least not in the eighty years that followed the publication of the Logi-cal Investigations). The reason is most likely that linguists (and philosophers


as well) had much difficulty in seeing what such a semantic system shouldconsist in (whereas many theories about formal syntactic systems of combi-nation were available, at least since Bolzano). Even granted that dependentsignifications require semantic completion of a determinate sort and thus provethe existence of principles governing this completion, it was for many dec-ades difficult to see how these principles could be amenable to systematiccharacterization, and consequently how linguistic inquiries should be con-ducted in these terms.

As we have seen, Husserl himself was not eloquent on this issue. Perhapsbecause he himself did not know how the idea of grammar was to be estab-lished within such a comprehensive theoretical framework, i.e., how it couldbe possible to characterize the systematic correlation of the level of grammati-cal expressions, the semantic level of significations, and the level of pre-lin-guistic presentations (Vorstellungen). This may be the reason why he notonly changed, but certainly also substantially reduced his scope, and redefinedboth his object and the a priori on which he would ground it.

This change and restriction of scope is also likely to respond to another,already mentioned, difficulty: the fact that in his first semantic approach,Husserl lays bare essential structures of language that indeed govern the con-figuration of parts into wholes in general, that is to say, far beyond the realmof linguistic significations. This could be and has certainly been considered aquite annoying circumstance in at least one respect: If the issue is language,and if language is a phenomenon endowed with certain properties and char-acteristics that make it evidently distinguishable from other objects, then theessential distinctions proper to language should, allegedly, be drawn withinthe sphere of grammar itself. The essential properties assigned to languageshould be extracted from language itself and only from there. Otherwise therisk of a metabasis looms large, i.e., the danger of characterizing an object ofone type (linguistic meanings) in terms pertaining to an object of another type(such as contents of perception).27

All the above difficulties have, I believe, been overcome. We do indeedknow what a semantic combinatorial system is supposed to look like and howit is likely to be characterized; we have substantial (though diverging) ideasof what functions it serves, and we can conceive why and how it is connectedto thought in general and perception in particular. As concerns the latter,Talmys works illustrate rather well how it is possible both to found linguis-tic structure on pre-linguistic conceptual structure and to provide systematicdescriptions and characterizations of the linguistic system per se (for in-stance, in terms of what categories and types of structure closed-class ele-ments specify).28


Finally, in the present paper I have of course not wished to disregard theimportance of syntactic constituency. It is certainly a remarkable fact thatsentences such as this medieval prime number is scared are meaningful andperfectly congruous (at least following Husserls first rough sketch). Obvi-ously, no language would be capable of expressing anything if it did not fol-low some principles of syntactic combination. (It is also true for unpluggedcomputers that they cannot calculate.) What I have called into question is ratherthe (wrongly) entrenched assumption, inaugurated by Husserl in the FourthInvestigation, that the essence of language is reducible to principles govern-ing the linear combination of linguistic parts in virtue of their syntactic formand regardless of their semantic import. There is no a priori reason why theobject language should be reduced to only this aspect. At least, it seemsequally justified to endorse a holistic-functional view and consider languagea symbolic system that qua symbolic essentially serves the purpose of express-ing thoughts in a very large sense. In this case, of course, an urgent task con-sists in accounting for the means of which language disposes to articulate thesecontents faithfully, that is to say, according to the way they have been expe-rienced or intended. What is of particular interest here is that strong and de-scribable elements of constituency can be laid bare in this domain. Of coursenot in the linear sense of constituency, but, as it were, transversally to it, byvirtue of the very contents expressed. Accordingly, verbs, for example, do notonly specify a specific mode of action, but correlatively to this mode of ac-tion they also unfold a schematically configured scenario with a determinatenumber of participants and determinate relations between these (thus giveimplies a giver, an object, and some receiver, and a specifically oriented trans-fer of the object; it shares this schematic content with another verb like send).This configurational content does warrant a genuine semantic combination ofmeanings, and it does so through structural properties both different and priorto the combinatorial principle governing the well-formed linear combinationof a subject, a verb, an object, and an indirect object in a sentence.29

This is, I believe, what the first part of Husserls Fourth Investigation aimedat exposing. The crucial question is not how language combines words lin-early, but how language, under this one-dimensional constraint, is capable ofexpressing everyday thoughts and experiences composed in pluri-dimensionalcomplex wholes.

Notes

1. In the following, references to the Logical Investigations are given directly in the textwith no further indications, like this: (XX/YY). The first page indication refers to


Findlays translation of the Logical Investigations, the next to the original second edi-tion in German.

2. On Jakobson and Husserl, see first of all Elmar Holensteins indispensable RomanJakobsons Approach to Language Phenomenological Structuralism (1976). E. CassirersStructuralism in Modern Linguistics (1945) also emphasizes this connection. Mulligan(1988) characterizes the mereological foundation of K. Bhlers theory of language, and,finally, Stjernfelt (2000) is a very instructive general survey of the role of mereology,the theory of parts and wholes, in linguistics and semiotics.

3. The title of Lakoff and Johnsons Philosophy in the Flesh (2000) is of course indebtedto Merleau-Pontys concept of la chair and to Husserls concept of Leib. Johnson (1987)characterizes his method as one of descriptive phenomenology. The claim that linguisticsignifications, expressed by signs, are sustained by meaning-conferring and meaning-fulfilling acts constitutes the initial core argument of the First Investigation. The foun-dation of predicative judgments on ante-predicative judgments is at the heart of HusserlsExperience and Judgment (1939).

4. One of the first philosophers to consider the Fourth Investigation as a precursor of mod-ern logic and incidentally of modern linguistics was Bar-Hillel, who in his paper from1957, Husserls Conception of a purely Logical Grammar, concludes: [. . .], we maysay that Husserls conception of a purely logical grammar has to be regarded, in a veryessential and pregnant sense, as a forerunner of Carnaps conception of a general logi-cal syntax. One has only to omit the detour through the realm of meaning, and the re-liance upon an apodictic evidence and to add a mastery in modern symbolic logic andits philosophy in order to perform the transition from Husserl to Carnap (Bar-Hillel 1957,p. 369). J.-L. Gardis (1975) very instructively develops the theoretical affinities betweenChomsky and Husserl, and much closer to us, also the French phenomenologist J. Benoistconcludes one of his numerous works on the Fourth Investigation with the followingremark: One of the logical consequences of the considerations developed in the presentwork, particularly as regards the syntactic a priori, would certainly consist in re-actual-izing the discussion about the connection between Chomsky and phenomenology andabout the possibility of developing a Chomskyan interpretation (minus mentalism) ofphenomenology (Benoist 1999, p. 68; my translation). And finally, D. Mnch criticallyobserves: If we look at the fourth Logical Investigation we can see that Husserl is aforerunner of Chomsky. In this investigation Husserl applies the basic concepts of for-mal ontology which he had developed in the third investigation to grammar. Languageis conceived as a field which is guided by purely formal rules, which has to be studiedby a discipline he calls pure grammar [. . .] This grammar has an algorithmic charac-ter, too. But Husserl does not only support a computational approach to language. Moreo-ver, it is one of his central claims that our intentions are restricted by the laws of purelylogical grammar. Thoughts which are not in accordance with these laws are nonsense,i.e., they cannot be directed towards an intentional object (Mnch 2002, p. 203).

5. To avoid all possible misunderstandings I stress as such: the concepts used by Husserlin the first nine paragraphs (dependent and independent meanings, relations of founda-tion, etc.) neither have been ignored nor are they to be considered as essentially incom-patible with syntactic analysis as such. As we have already seen, structural linguisticsexploits exactly these conceptual tools in its characterization of language as an autono-mous, functional system. And as Mulligan (1988) has shown there is nothing intrinsi-cally inconsistent in a mereological approach to syntax: in his Theory of Language, Bhler


indeed exposes the basic tenets of such a syntactic theory (to a large extent developed inthe very same terms by the founding father of modern theory of syntax, Lucien Tesniere(1959). My point is simply that no one seems to have further elaborated, even appreci-ated, Husserls sketch of a comprehensive theory of semantic unity in mereological terms.Even Benoist (1999, 2001), who clearly identifies Husserls ambition, rejects it; alas,on a priori grounds, without reference to any linguistic theory, let alone any linguisticfact.

6. I slightly modify Findlays translation of the German Selbstndigkeit and Unselbstndig-keit. In order to follow, at least a bit, the German constructions, he chooses independ-ence for Selbstndigkeit and non-independence for Unselbstndigkeit; to avoid themeanderings of a double negation, I prefer the straightforward: independence forSelbstndigkeit and dependence for Unselbstndigkeit.

7. This is why moments, though dependent, are said to be prior to pieces: Strictly speak-ing our approach is positive in the case of what is dependent, negative in the case of whatis independent (Third Investigation, 13/241).

8. Cf. We have recognized that the seemingly indifferent distinction between categorematicand syncategorematic expressions corresponds to a fundamental division in the realmof meanings. We took the former as our starting point, but the latter revealed itself asbasic, as the prime foundation of the grammatical distinction (58/310).

9. Presentation translates Vorstellung (idea, representation).10. In view of the subsequent, entirely syntactic, analyses, this statement is indeed aston-

ishing: it is easily seen that Husserls mereological foundation of linguistic constituencyis not at all applicable to syntax in his sense. Let us consider the syncategorematic ex-pression A as a syntactic category regardless of any signification we now apply thelaw according to which it should appear in a (syntactic) whole of a specific sort G(AB...M), where B...M stand for determinate sorts of syntactic categories. Obviously theextension of this law (say, the number of syntactic constructions in which (A, e.g., theconjunction but, can occur) is indefinitely big, and thus quite indeterminate. Now,compare this to its semantic counterpart, where but expresses an intentional form ofcombination; in this case, but requires only one sort of context: one in which a rela-tion of contrast, tension, or conflict is intended to hold between two partial representa-tions combined by but. I will discuss this in further detail below.

11. Pre-linguistic in the sense that the act or the meaning intention precedes the forma-tion of linguistic signification. There is intention of meaning before there is specificsignification. Consider the expression tiger safe nature reserve; it is impossible to saywhether it means that the reserve is a safe place for the tigers or that it yields protectionagainst the intrusion of tigers. As Husserl put it in the First Investigation, the differencedepends on the meaning-conferring intentional acts and the way they animate the word-ing.

12. Benoist (1999, chapter 5) also stresses this. So does Mulligan, yet without consideringit a problem: Bhler, however, like Husserl and Marty, was aware, as most contempo-rary writers are not, that these notions [of dependence and constituency] can be system-atically applied above and below the level of syntactic structure as well as out-sidelanguage (Mulligan 1988, p. 208).

13. Cf., The impossibility attaches, to be more precise, not to what is singular in the mean-ings to be combined, but to the essential kinds, the semantic categories, that they fallunder (62/318). Semantic category translates Bedeutungskategorie, but what is


meant here is nothing but syntactic category. The fact that the same term, Bedeutungis used indistinctly throughout the whole Investigation (yet in two different senses) mayhave served to blur the essential differences between the two approaches.

14. Findlays translation does not faithfully render Husserls expressions. In the Germanversion, Husserl says Gehen wir formalisierend von der gegebenden Bedeutung [. . .]zur entsprechenden Bedeutungsgestalt, zur Satzform ber, so erhalten wir dies S ist p,eine Formidee, die in ihrem Umfang lauter selbstndige Bedeutungen befat (pp. 318319). Findlay conflates Bedeutungsgestalt and Satzform into pure form of mean-ing (p. 62), which contributes to obliterating the fact that whenever expressions suchas meaning or semantic (category) are used in this and the following paragraphs,what is meant is syntactic function or syntactic category.

15. On this issue, cf. Jocelyn Benoists analyses in Benoist (1999, chapter V; 2001, chapterIV). The present paper is in a way indebted to Benoists minute scrutiny of the FourthInvestigation in a whole series of works. My conclusions are nevertheless exactly op-posite his, most clearly as regards the question whether or not semantics on mereologicalgrounds is possible: I do not, contrary to Benoist, believe that this question is decidableon purely a priori grounds.

16. This defines in fact the very core and purpose of Chomskys transformational and gen-erative grammar in its orthodox version. In this respect, Husserl is evidently a forerun-ner of this linguistic theory.

17. Abstractly distinguishable parts is B. Smiths expression (1994, p. 270) and is used tocharacterize the nature of wholes and the status of their parts according to the BerlinSchool of Gestalt. The gestalt theoretical difference evoked here is indeed the one be-tween the Austrian theory of Gestalt (von Ehrenfels, Husserl, Stumpf) and the BerlinSchool of Gestalt (Wertheimer, Koffka, Khler) on this see Smith (1994, chapter 8).Mulligan (1988) provides analyses of Karl Bhlers theory of language based on the samedistinction.

18. Simply to show how familiar this type of questioning is within linguistics, I shall quotefrom R. Jackendoffs recent book. Foundations of Language (2002): Assuming that thefunction of language is the expression and communication of thought, I will identifysemantics as the organization of those thoughts that language can express [. . .] Thethoughts expressed by language are structured in terms of a cognitive organization calledconceptual structure. Conceptual structure is not part of language per se it is part ofthought (Jackendoff 2002, p. 123). Incidentally, it is worthwhile noticing that the firstof Jackendoffs assumptions is almost literally identical with Husserls view accordingto which language serves the purpose of articulating expressible thought, and the ar-gument arrives at the same conclusion: if language is to express, faithfully, contents ofthought, it must dispose of means to organize semantic contents, i.e., it must be sustainedby a system capable of combining contents which is not derived from or likely to beassimilated to syntax.

19. The following examples are not mine. Charles Fillmore uses them, yet to a different end,in his article Frame Semantics, which is, by the way, a genuine piece of mereologicalsemantics that extends the dependence of significations right into the heart of thecategorematic expressions: By the term frame I have in mind any system of conceptsrelated in such a way that to understand any of them you have to understand the wholestructure in which it fits; when one of the things in such a structure is introduced into atext, or into a conversation, all of the others are automatically made available (Fillmore


1982, p. 111). The meaning of sell or seller is in other words founded on a wholescenario implying a buyer, an object to be bought, etc.

20. I stress: it is agrammatical not for logical reasons, but for reasons inherent to the lawsgoverning the combination of meanings at that level.

21. This dogma finds one of its first and clearest expressions in Husserls second, syntactic,approach in the Fourth Investigation. According to this view, there is no other structur-ing principle in the domain of language than the one sustained by the ideal syntactic forms.

22. This is indeed, according to Talmy, the fundamental feature that justifies the characteri-zation of closed-class contents as schematic. The schematic contents of, for instance,prepositions are thus semantic correlates to a previous conceptual process of abstrac-tion where single elements or whole reference scenes in all their bulk and physicalityare differentially boiled down to match ascribed schemas (Talmy 2000, p. 220). Im-plied in such use of schemata is thus a cognitive process of idealization, i.e., a modeof intending a referent scene only with respect to those properties that instantiate theschema, and correlatively a process of abstraction of all those properties that are notrelevant for the schema. A schema underlying the preposition in could, once again inFregean terms, be called a two-argument function (or a vague predicate) that specifies arelation of containment between one element conceptualized as a figure and a groundconceptualized as a volume. Hence, as Talmy often has remarked, the neutrality of theschema as to the material differences of the scenes to which it is applied, cf: the waterin the teaspoon, the baby in her arms, the fish in the ocean.

23. Husserl makes the very same point in his First Investigation ( 12).24. As Talmy remarks: Clearly, the language-related faculty of the brain evolved to its

present character in the presence of already existing cognitive domains, including thatof vision, and no doubt developed in interaction with their mechanisms of functioning,perhaps incorporating some of these (Talmy 2000, p. 96).

25. Examples are in fact legion here. Consider, for example, the difference between a ver-bal and a prepositional construction in French: (a) Ils longent la rivire vs. Ils marchentle long de la rivire. Talmy, too, operates with the same distinction between a synoptic(summary) mode as in There are some houses in the valley and a sequential mode as in There is a house every now and then through the valley (Talmy 2000, p. 71). Thesystematic exposition of the notional contents of grammatical categories and their rela-tion to modes of intentions can by the way be traced back to R. Ingarden (1931), who al-most literally anticipates certain fundamental assumptions of Langackers; he too addressesthe issue of whether or not there is an essential difference between nominal and verbalsignifications and claims that the difference is due to the quite different types of inten-tionality, i.e., to the way the intentional correlates have been intentionally construed bythe corresponding [nominal or verbal] significations (Ingarden 1931, p. 7778).

26. According to Talmy, the wide variety of grammatical elements endowed with semanticfunctions group in a rather restricted set of schematic categories, which in turn clusterin only four different general s

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Bundgaard, P. (2004). the Ideal Scaffolding of Language