Logical Syntax and Semantics Yehoshua Bx-Hillel

Language, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1954), pp. 230-237.

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MGICAL SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

Hebrew Uniuersity, Jerusalem Though considerations of meaning in linguistics can be replwed, up to a point, by rigorous STRUCTURAL procedures, i.e. procedures involving solely the kinds and order of the elements of the language under investigation, they cannot be replaced by DISTRIBUTIONAL procedures, despite the claim recently made by Harris.' Distributional procedures may be suficient to establish the rules by which all longer expressions (especially sentences) can be constructed out of the elements, but they are inadequate for the establishment of certain other rules that would mirror the so-called logical properties and relations of sentences and other expressions. I t is worth while to quote a t this point what the logician Rudolf Carnap had to say on this topic some twenty years ago:= By the logical syntax of a language, we mean the formal theory of the linguistic forms of that lanaage-the systematic statement of the formal rules which govern it together with the development of the consequences which follow from these rules. A theory, a rule, a definition, or the like is to be called formal when no reference is made in it either to the meaning of the symbols (for example, the words) or to the sense of the expressions (e.g. the sentences), but simply and solely to the kinds and order of the symbols from which the expressions are coustmcted. The prevalent opinion is that syntax and logic, in spite of some points of contact between them, are fundamentally theories of a very different type. The syntax of a language is supposed to lay down rules according to which the linguistic structures (e-g. the wnbnces) are to be built up from the elements (such as words or park of words). The chief task of logic, on the other hand, is supposed to be that of formulating rules according to which judgments may be inferred from other judgments; in other words atcording to which conclusions may be drawn from premksea. But the development of logic during the past ten years has shown clearly that it can only be studied with any degree of accuracy when it is based, not on judgments (thoughts, or the content of thoughts) but rather on linguistic expressions, of which sentences are the most important, because only for them is it possible to lay down sharply defined rules. And actually, in practice, every logician since Aristotle, in laying down sharply defined rules, has dealt mainly with sentences. But even those modern logiciam
Zellig S. Harria, Methods in slructural LinguQliea 8 fn. 7 (Chicago, 1951). The work on which the preeent paper is based waa done while the author waa employed by the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Mmsitchusetts Institute of Technology. It was aupported in part by the Air Materiel Command, the Signal Corpa, and the Officeof Naval Research, and in part by the Rockefeller Foundation. The author is grateful to the Editor of L A N D U A ~who read an earlier draft of this paper E, and suggested many changea and deletiom, thereby improving its cogency and reducing the number of it8 errora. 2 Rudolf Carnap, Ths logicul s$mtaz of tanpage 1-2 (New York and London, 1937). The German original, Die logkache Syntax der Sprache, waa published in Vienna. in 1934.

LOGICAL SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

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who agree with us in our opinion that logic is concerned with sentences, are yet for the most part convinced that logic is equally concerned with the relations of meaning between sentences. They consider that, in contrast with the rules of syntax, the rulea of logic are non-formal. In the following pages, in opposition to this standpoint, the view that logic, too, is concerned with the formal treatment of sentences will be presented and developed. We shall see that the logical characteristics of sentences (for instance, whether a, sentence is analytic, synthetic, or contradictory; whether i t is a n existential sentence or not; and so on) and the logical relations between them (for instance, whether two sentences contradict one another or are compatible with one another; whether one is logically deducible from the other or not; and so on) are solely dependent upon the syntactica1 structure of the sentences. I n this way, logic will become a part of syntax, provided that the Iatter is conceived in a sufficiently wide sense and formulated with exactitude. The difference between syntactica1 rules in the narrower sense and the logical rules of deduction is only the &Rerenee between formation rules and transformation rules, both of which are completely formuIable in syntactica1 terms. Thus we are justified in designating as 'logical syntax' the system which comprises the rules of formation and transformation. What Carnap in 1934 called 'the prevalent opinion' continues to be prevalent among contemporary linguists. The establishment of the 'statements which enable anyone to synthesize or predict utterances in the language' (Methods 372) is still regarded as the sole aim of descriptive linguistics, 'as the term has come to be used' (id. 5); Fries's recent book The structure of EngZglksh (New York, 1952) has the subtitle An introduction h the construction of English sentences. I t is the rules of formation which have caught the exclusive attention of the structural linguist ;3 the rules of transformation continue to be relegated-with one notable exception, to be mentioned presently-to the limbo of an extra-linguistic logic. T i unfortunate disregard of Carnap's conception of a LOGICAL SYNTAX is hs not entirely the linguists' fault. Carnap himself and the logicians who followed his lead were too preoccupied with constructed language systems to devote much time and effort to an application of their views to the description of ordinary languages. Carnap even believed (op.cit. 2) that 'the statement of the formal rules of formation and transformation [of natural languages] would be so complicated that it would hardly be feasible in practice'. This belief is certainly correct for a COMPLETE statement of the rules, but fairly good approximations should be achievable with some effort. This effort has been expended, as a matter of fact, for the rules of formation; there is no good reason for not doing the same for the rules of transformation. Indeed, beginnings for such an undertaking exist already; but these are the work of logicians and philosophers, who are often biased by their underlying metaphysical conceptions and their adherence to Aristotelian or Scholastic ways of thinking. It is the duty of the structural. linguist to scrutinize Carnap's conception earefully; after all, Carnap is not a linguist proper. I and when his conception is f found t o be linguistically sound, as I think i t is, we shall have to give up Harris's a The term 'structural linguist' is used throughout this paper to meau 'aome American
structural linguists', of whom Blocb, Harris, Hoekett, Smith, and Trsger are a, representative sample.

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contention (Methods 5) that 'the main research of descriptive linguistice, and the only relation which will be accepted as relevant ...,is the distribution or arrangement within the flow of speech of some parts or features relative to others'. based upon the relation of DIRECT CONSEQUENCE: Instead, LOGICAL ANALYSIS, will have to be given equal rights with DISTRIBUTIONAL ANALYSIS. This will entail, of course, a radical change in the official conception of elicitation techniques. Until now the informant hras been required only to supply repetitions of sound sequences, to judge whether two sound-sequences are the same or not, to tell whether certain sound-sequences are sentences or not, and to determine whether 'two items are the "same" in a particular aspect of meaning or "different1' '.6 I t now becomes necessary to develop techniques of elicitation for logical analysis which will have the same degree of relia-bility and validity as those developed for distributional analysis. Direct questioning ('Do oculist and eye-hctor mean the same to you?') may serve as a first approximation, to be replaced in time by more objective methods. Notice that Harris h i i l f indicates, a t one place, an elicitation technique to this effect when he says; 'one can read the text sentence ... in company with an informant, and then stop and say to him, in an expectant and hesitant way, "That is to say, ...," waiting for him to supply the continuation,' However, Harris seems not to be aware that what he gets from the informant by this technique is much more than information about distribution. Since structural linguists have no doubt been using such techniques in their practical work, i t is of utmost importance that they make these techn i q u e ~explicit, become aware of their theoretical function, and analyze and improve upon them. Most structural linguists seem to have recognized that not all aspects of linguistics can be handled by distributional analysis alone; but there is one who attempted the seemingly impossible. Wishing to exploit this kind of analysis to its utmost, Harris has chimed that he can describe in purely distributional terms both synonymy relations (say between oculist and eyedoclor) and the activepassive relationship (say between plays and is played by) ; and he would probably undertake, if challenged, to do the same with respect to the difference between Latin aut and uel. According to his basic postulate (Methods 7 fn. 4), 'It may be presumed that any two morphemes having different meanings also differ somewhere in distribution.' It would then seem to follow that any two morphemes f with the same distribution have the same meaning. I we were to grant these presumptions, then indeed many of the transformational aspects of language, if not all of them, would be reducible to the formational aspects. But in spite of some initial plausibility, the presumptions are false. Whatever conviction they carry is due to the fact that many of the terms involved are equivocal. It wl il be worth whle to analyze some of these equivocations. The first is language itself. This term is sometimes understood as the totality of ail possible sentence-types (or utterance-types), sometimes as the totality of all actually uttered sentence-tokens: or perhaps as the totality of ail sentence'See Logical smlnlaz 1 0 7. 6 Structure of English 8 fn. 6 . a Discourae anslyaid, Lg. 28.20 fa.13 (1952). 7 Following the usage of Charlea S. Peirce, a &ION-TYPE is the abstract class of all coa-

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tokens that have been uttered or will be uttered until the extinction of the users o this language. f Now if we consider a language as the totality of all possible sentence-types, Harris's presumption is clearly false. Greenand red are surelydifferent morphemes, but their distribution within this totality (with respect to English, of course) is ALMOST exactly the same, i.e, the same up to a subset of special environmenh which will cause trouble to any consistent and would-be simple description. This subset, to use a fitting mathematical metaphor-which is meant, however, more to help us dodge the problem than to solve it-is of measure zero. It would contain, for instance, the environments -horn, into which only green would fit but not red, and -skin, into which only red would fit but not green. Except for such cases, within the totality of all possible sentence-types, there is for any sentence containing red a (significant) sentence that contains green instead, and vice versa. However, if we take a language to be the totality of all sentence-tokens uttered up to a certain time (or alternatively, the totality of all sentence-types of whch tokens have been uttered up to a certain time), then-disregarding a coincidence of cosmic dimensions-no two morphemes will show the same distribution. For this interpretation Harris's presumption would indeed turn out to be true, but in such a trivial fashion that i t can hardly be what he meant. The relations between oculist and eye-doctor, oculist and dentist, oculist and beauty, ocuLi~tand green are of four different types, each of which must be the concern of the structural linguist. T o state only that within a given totality of sentencetokens all these morphemes exhibit diierent distributions is surely not the whole truth-in fact only a small part of it. Even to state that oculist, eye-doctor and dentist have aImost equal distribution within the totality of all sentence-types, whereas o c d i s t and beauty have overlapping distribution, and oculist and green have almost exclusive distribution, though incomparably more revealing, still misses the essential difference between the first two pairs. Sameness of distribution, within the type-totality, is perhaps a necessary but certainly not a sufficient condition for sameness of meaning; hence, difference of meaning is perhaps a necessary but certainly not a sufficient condition for difference of distribution, with respect to the same totality. Since 'sameness of distribution' and 'sameness of meaning' are certainly not convenient terms, other terms are usually employed instead. Here, however, another equivocation becomes effective. Oculist and dentist are ~ U B S T I T ~ T A B L E in the sense that anya sentence containing the one will turn into a sentence (not necessarily a sentence with the same meaning or even with the same truth-value) when this is replaced by the other. Oculist and eye-doclor are substitutable in the sense that any sentence containing the one wiIl turn into a sentence with necessarily the same truth-value when this is repIaced by the other. For both these
crete SIGN-TOKENSwhich (by some criterion) belong-to-the-same-type. Cf. Y. Bar -Billel, A quasi-arithmetical notation for syntactic description, Lg. 29.49 (1953); Cherry, Halle, and Jakobson, Toward the logical description of languages in their phonemic u p e c t , Lg. 29.45 fn. 13 (1953). From now on the qualifier almost will be omitted.

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essentially different relations, the term substitutable (or replaceable, or commutable, or even equwalentj is used indifferently, more often than not without even a quahfying adverbial. A consisknt use of qualifiers like disttibudionally and logically (or, more fancifully, s&a significalione and s&a verktate) could assist in avoiding the pitfalls connected with this equivocation; but a convention to use, say, commuiabk for the first sense and interckangeable for the second, would be even better. There has been recently a lively discussion of the degree of interdependence of the various structural layer^'.^ I t seems to me that part of the purists' insistence on a sharp demarcation between phonology and grammar is based on the assumption that a treatment of the syntactical-transformational aspects of language is in constant danger of succumbing to an infestation by meaning, an evil from which those aspects of language that can be shown to be independent of syntax can be saved. Indeed, so long a~ syntax, as traditionally handled, was a MEANING SYNTAX, it was methodologically worth while to adopt the procedure of Trager and Smith in An o d i n e of English structure (1951), which, based upon purely distributional analysis, rigidly discriminah between ascending levels of complexity of organization. If only one could establish phonemics without recourse to grammar, the danger of letting semantic considerations creep in would be considerably reduced if not completely eliminated. I believe that some of the attractiveness of this attitude is reduced by recognizing that a description of the transfomatioml aspects of syntax can be just as free of meaning as other parts of a linguistic treatment. The fear of allowing meaning to intrude is of course only one reason for the sharp-level approach. Another, probably more important, is the fear of circularity. If (say) the term 'morpheme' is used in the definition of the phoneme, and vice versa, then certainly this procedure looks viciously circular, and the logical soundness of the science that uses such definkions is gravely jeopardized. Pike, however, has given sound reasons why this fear, in its generalized form, is groundless. Moreover, it is possible to show tbat certain types of concept introductions which look circular are not so in fact-types in which the elimination of the newly introduced term does not involve an infinite regress. As a matter of fact, concept formations of these kinds are in regular use in mathematics, and especially in mathematical logic, where they are known as special cases of ~ECURSIVE DEFINITIONS. It seems rather likely (though a detailed proof would require many man-hours of work) that Pike's nine-step procedure (op.cit. 120) can be formalized and adequately represented by a set of such dehitions. Since I have treated this topic elsewhere a t some length,'O I shdl say no more here. It is an inkresting fact, deserving the attention of sociologists of science, that at approximately the same time, but in complete independence of each other, Bloomfield and Carnap were fighting the psychologism that dominakd their respective fields, linguistics and logic. They both deplored the mentalistic mud
Kenneth L. Pike, More on grammatical prerequisites, Word 8.106-21, (1952), and the references mentioned there. '0 On recursive definitions in empirical science, Proc. 11th Internal. Congresa of Philoso@

phy 5.16@5 (Bruswls, 1953).

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into which the study o meanings had fallen, and tried to reconstruct their fields f on a purely formal-structural basis. I think it is correct to say that the difference between the structural linguist and the formal Iogician is one of stress and degree rather than of kind. Both are essentially attempting to construct language systems that stand in some correspondence to natural languages-though most linguists would say that they are just describing the latter. But whereas for the linguist the closeness of this correspondence is the criterion by which he will judge the adequacy of the language system he is setting up, which alone entitles him to consider himself as describing a given natural language, the logician will look primarily for other features of his system, such as simplicity of handling, fruitfulness for science, and ease of deduction and computation, with close correspondence to a natural language as only a secondary desideratum. Constructed Ianguage systems are judged by the linguist according to the degree to which they approximate a natural language; natural languages are judged by the logician according to the degree to which they approximate efficient, wellconstructed language systems. I have gone into these generalities in order to emphasize the following point. A few years after Carnap's elaborate attempt to show that prima facie semsntic considerations can be satisfactorily mirrored in formal syntax, he reversed himself completely, reintroduced semantics into logic, and dedicated t o it most of his later studies." This development is not surprising if we remember that semantics was no longer, by thii time, the hodgepodge that went under this name in the first quarter of our century and so much repelled Bloomfield. In the early thirties, Polish logicians of the Warsaw-Lwdw school-mainly T. Kotarbinski, A. Tarski, and K. Ajdukiewice-gave this science a foundation which made i t fully competitive with LOGICAL SYNTAX. This was achieved both through an extensive and skillful use of the symbolism of mathematical logic, and by deliberately abstracting from the users and usages of the signs under study and considering only their relations to what was signified by them. Bloomfield's strictures against semantics and the use of meaning for linguistic description, though valid against the state of that field a t the time he wrote, do not hold against this revitalized science, in the form given to it by Tarski,12 Carnap, Quine,la and others. I have no intention of bridging the abyss between those linguists who STILL use semantic considerations in their analysis and those who use them AGAIN, just as I do not wish to minimize the corresponding difference between philosophers. I believe that only those who have followed the syntactical method to its very end will be able to appraise adequately the status of the new semantics in descriptive linguistics. M y plea for the reintroduction of semantics into the theatre of operations of
11 Foundation8 of logic and m l h e m t i c s , International encyclopedia of unified science, V o l . 1, No.3 (Cbicago, 1939) ; Introdwtion to semantics (Cambridge, Mass,, 1942) ; Meaning and necessity (Chicago, 1947). '9Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen [written 19331, Studia philasophica 1 . 2 6 1 4 5 (1936); The semantic conception of truth and the foundation of semantics, Phihsophy a d phenomenological research 4.341-76 (1944). The latter is reprinted in Readings in philosophical analysis 52-84 (ed. H . Feigl find W. Sellars; Mew York, 1949) and in Sem a t i c s and the philasophy of language 13-47 (ed. L. Linsky; Urbana, Ill., 1952).

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descriptive Iinguiatics will be strengthened, I think, i we follow Carnap and f Quine in showing that the term 'semantics' bas been understood, traditionalIy as well as by the Polish school of logicians, to contain two rather separate theorim with two different sets of concepts. The one theory deals with the INTENSIONAL or CONNOTATIONAL aspects of language or other sign systems, i.e. MEANING (in a restricted mnse of this word), the other with the EXTENSIONAL, DENOTATIONAL, or REFERENTIAL aspects. Carnap calk themu THEORY OF INTENSION and THEORY OF EXTENSION respeetiveIy, Quine calla them1= THEORY OF MEANING and THEORY OF REFERENCE. The first member of each pair deals with such concepts as logical truth, logical equivalence, and synonymy; the second member deals with truth, equality in truth-value, and coextensiveness. To find out whether a given atatement is Iagically true, whether two statements are logically equivalent, or whether two expressions are synonymous, one needs to know only their intension (connotation, meaning) ; to find out whether a certain statement is true, whether two statements have the same truth-value, or whether two expressions are coextensive, one must aka make detailed observations, or rely on experience. But i t is certainly not the lingukt's business, or for that matter the logician's, to h d these things out. That morning star and evening &P are coextensive (denote the same physical entity) is hardly of interest to the logician qua logician or to the linguist qua linguist; it is, rather, the astronomer's duty to find this out. Whether the statement All cats have tails is true is certainly not an exclusively linguistic problem, but rather one for the zoologist. A linguist who decides that it is not his concern to find out which English statements are true and which English expressions are coextensive is fully justified; he can safely disregard these (pseudo)-semantic aspects of language. Some linguists, however, have thrown away the baby with the bath water. By totally discarding semantics, they have committed two sins. First, it is very definitely the linguist's concern that oculist and eye-doctor are not only commutable but synonymous (co-intensive), and a description that contained no statement of this fact would be seriously inadequate. (If this is agreed upon, then i t must be equally the linguist's concern to state that from All Greeks are men and Socrates is a Greek, follows Socratea is a m n ;and he should no longerexcept for pragmatic reasons-leave such statements to his colleague the logician.) Secondly, both THEORY OF MEANING (in addition to meaning itself) and THEORY OF REFERENCE (though not reference itself) are of vital importance to him, since-like every other scientist-he has to worry from time to time about methodological questions. It has been the purport of this paper to establish the following four points. (1) There exists a conception of syntax, due to Carnap, that is purely formal (structural) and adequate in a sense in which the conception prevalent among American structural linguists is not. This conception entails a certain fusion
'a For instance, Notes on existence and neeeesity, Journal of philosophy 40.113-27 (19431, reprinted in Semntica and the philosophy of t a a g w z g e 77-91. 14 80 far as I know, Carnap has not wed thew terms in print, but they fit the main argument of Meaning and neceseily, and were used by him in correspondence. 1 8 For instance, Two dogmaa of empiricism, l'hihsophical review 60.22 (1951).

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between grammar and logic, with grammar treating approximately the formational part of syntax and logic its transformational part. The relation of COMMUTABILITY may be sufficient as a basis for formational analysis, but other relations, such as that of formal CONSEQUENCE, must be added for transformational analysis. Since modern techniques of elicitation have been developed mainly with distributional analysis in view, a new approach is required that will yield reliable techniques of elicitation for the establishment of synonymy and the like. (2) A recent attempt by Harris to reduce the transformational part of syntax to its formational part is based on a series of equivocations in the terms language, eguiualent, commuhble, and their cognates, and so is without foundation. (3) The tendency exhibited by many contemporary structural linguists to set up sharp demarcation lines between the various linguistic subfields is presumed to be based, first, on the attempt to keep linguistics as far as possible independent of concepts open to the intrusion of meaning and, secondly, on a fear of circularity in the definition of basic terms. But Carnap has shown that even the transformational aspects of syntax can be described without appeal to meaning; and recent methodological studies of concept formation indicate that certain procedures with a circular look are in fact harmless because the terms introduced by them can be finitely eliminated. (4) The generalized fear of letting meaning intrude into linguistics seems to rest mainly on the fact that in the first quarter of this century the study of meaning was indeed in a bad methodological state. But since then, mainly through the efforts of Polish logicians, semantics has become a well-defined, rigorous field. This change has caused Carnap to reintroduce semantics into logic, and should cause descriptive linguists to follow Carnap's lead.16
Ifl For a somewhat different approach to the problems discuseed here, see Baskell B. Curry, Mathematics, syntactics, and logic, Mind 62.172-33 (1953).