The semantic theory of language

Abstract

Traditional linguistics was based on the idea that language is an activity that links sounds and meaning, an idea that has been referred to as ‘the code view of language’ because codes are the most familiar processes that generate meaning. Ever since the work of Noam Chomsky, however, this view has been increasingly replaced by ‘the syntax view of language’, the idea that children learn a language because they have an innate mechanism that allows them to grasp the syntax of whatever language they grow up with. This innate mechanism has been given various names – first Universal Grammar, then Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and finally Faculty of Language – but despite decades of research attempts there still is no evidence that such a device actually exists. At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that codes are not the sole processes that generate meaning. Another such process is the ability of higher animals to interpret what goes on in the world, and interpretation is different from coding because it is not based on fixed rules but on a process that Charles Peirce called abduction. This allows us to generalize the code view of language into the semantic view of language, a theory which maintains that language is primarily a semantic activity that gives meaning to sounds either by codes or by processes of interpretation. This view, furthermore, gives us a new theoretical framework for studying the origin of language without resorting to any deus ex machina device. In this framework the origin of language is compared with the origin of life and the origin of mind, because those mega transitions generated the three great families of codes that we find in Nature – the organic codes, the neural codes and the cultural codes – and it is possible that a comparative study allows us to catch a glimpse of the mechanisms that gave origin to language.