Modern Indian work at the logic-linguistics boundary

Abstract

What is to be the framework of inquiry in Indian logic and Indian linguistics? This unsolved and seldom discussed problem makes itself acutely felt in the area where investigation of Indian languages meets the study of the logic of human language in the sentential semantics of Indian languages like Gujarati, Bangla, San tali, Tamil, Sanskrit. The present paper argues for a particular conception of the tasks and of appropriate methods in Indian semantics. If these arguments are correct, it follows that research priorities in mainstream semantics will need to be revised, as will the scope of Indian logic. In mainstream semantics, work on structures involving quantification will become less urgent than research which breaks concepts like Existential Quantifier and Universal Quantifier down into components of linguistic interest. As for Indian logic, this field will have to expand to include work on the foundations of logic with roots in the empirical semantics of Indian languages. To see if such a move would constitute mere expansion, consider first the current status of Indian logic. It is useful to notice how the very term Indian Logic has an exegetic ring to it and to contrast this with the tone of the term Indian Linguistics. The latter term is actually ambiguous in this respect. Intoned one way, it can evoke hoary images of a succession of pundits carrying on an ancient and mediaeval intellectual activity which, perhaps only incidentally, is innocent of contact with Islam or the West; it is interesting that the time frame of Indian classical music, another tradition which uses typically Indian teaching methods to transmit itself, emphatically does include the Islamic period. Intoned another way, the term Indian Linguistics changes its sociology dramatically. Thus, when the organ of the Linguistic Society of India is called Indian Linguistics, the referent becomes an activity performed by many Indian and a handful of Western intellectuals in contemporary milieu, working in the research tradition of modern linguistics whose rules are continually redesigned by the metropolitan (Western) centres of cultural power — or of fashion, if you feel that it is not culture that is at stake. In any event, what we need to notice is that the term Indian Logic