Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its influence on semantics

This paper discusses a recent idea proposed by A.L. Nikiforov that Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus did not have any impact on anyone who does not specialize in analytical philosophy. The author argues that Wittgenstein in his Tractatus proposed some ideas that had a major impact on one of the areas in contemporary linguistics, namely, formal semantics. The author considers three such ideas. This is the idea that a natural language can be analyzed by formal methods, the idea that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions, and the idea of a state of affairs as a possible situation denoted by a simple sentence. Formal semantics is one of the major areas of modern linguistics. It is a separate disciplinary field, with its own journals, conferences, PhD dissertations, etc. There are three key philosophical ideas that were adopted by this discipline. The first is the idea of compositionality (Frege's principle): the meaning of a complex expression is built from the meanings of the expressions it is composed from and the way they are combined. The second is the idea that the meaning of an affirmative sentence is its truth conditions. The third idea is that there is no fundamental difference between formal languages of logic and natural languages. As the analysis of Wittgenstein's diaries shows, as well as the analysis of Tractatus itself, Wittgenstein was the first one who formulated the idea that the meaning of a sentence is its truth conditions. Thus, we can conclude that at least one idea proposed in Tractatus influenced a whole discipline outside of philosophy. In addition, an analysis of Wittgenstein's early work shows that his attitude to natural languages was different than the one expressed by Russell, who believed that natural languages are too imprecise and illogical and could not be analyzed by formal methods. Wittgenstein was the first one to suggest that any natural language is logical, that an illogical language is impossible. This paper also draws parallels between Wittgenstein's notion of state of affairs and the concept of a minimal possible situation in situational semantics. Although these concepts are not identical, there are certain similarities there. Wittgenstein has definitely influenced philosophers who worked on this notion after him. Later this idea was adopted by linguists.

Keywords

Authors

References