On the Problem of Universals (1935)

Abstract

The indeterminateness of everyday language is apparent not only from its considerable departures from so-called ‘standard language’, e. g. standard English (in speech and writing), or in its vague assignments of meanings to expressions but also in the indeterminateness of its variety of syntactical forms. By syntactical forms I mean so-called semantical categories. The concept of semantical categories, originally introduced by E. Husserl, has been precisely elaborated by S. Leśniewski, not however in relation to natural languages but with respect to the symbolic language of his system of logic. In doing so Leśniewski was able to give a purely structural definition, i.e. in terms of purely external properties which two expressions always and only have if they belong to the same semantical category. When one wants to apply the basic idea of that classification to the expressions of everyday language, one cannot be satisfied — in view of the ambiguities in which that language abounds — with a purely structural definition and one has to appeal, in addition, to the meaning of the classified expressions. To familiarize readers with the term ‘semantical category’ it is convenient to begin by clarifying the term ‘sentence’. Now, from the logical point of view an expression taken in some of its senses is a sentence — if taken in that sense — it is either true or false. Hence the term ‘sentence’ has in logic a narrower extension than in grammar since interrogative sentences, commands, etc. do not belong to it but only expressions in which something is either asserted or denied.

Translated by Jerzy Giedymin. First published in Przegląd Filozoficzny XXXVIII (1935), 219–234. Translation based on the text in Język i Poznanie. I, 196–210. Reprinted here by kind permission of PWN.