Book review

The Building Blocks of Meaning

Michele Prandi 2004. The Building Blocks of Meaning. Ideas for a Philosophical Grammar. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Reviewed by Irene Russo, Department of Linguistics, University of Pisa

In the eleven chapters of The Building Blocks of Meaning, Prandi explicates his view of linguistic meaning, beginning with a semiotic background (chapters 1-3), continuing with the concept of significance (chapters 4-8) and ending with the ideation process of complex meanings (chapters 9-11).

This book proposes a philosophical grammar that includes significance within its scope, and which integrates the descriptive tools of formal grammar with a grammar of concepts. Prandi develops a grammar of forms that treats linguistic structures as independent of both conceptual contents and functional purposes, while a grammar of concepts structures the expression of meaning through linguistic forms. Concepts have an autonomous structure, which is accessible independently of linguistic expression. What Prandi investigates is the link between grammatical structures and conceptual structures, which is constrained by consistency criteria akin to those proposed by Strawson (1959), i.e. conceptual structures and cognitive models.

Part I: The semiotic background: Coding and inferencing in the ideation of complex meaning

The first part of the book revolves around dichotomies: relational coding vs. punctual coding, and internal inferencing vs. external inferencing. In relational coding, formal relational properties of syntactic structures map onto meanings, as for example in the coding of the agent as the subject of a given sentence. A network of such grammatical relations pertain to sentence nuclei: the formal structure of the sentence controls the distribution of participant roles.

In punctual coding, a given phrase with no definite position within the syntactic structure expresses a particular participant role in conceptual structure. Based on the content of linking words or expressions, punctual coding is not supported by a network of grammatical relations, but it expresses independent conceptual structures. To illustrate, a prepositional phrase could be connected to a sentence structure, where it could for example be interpreted as an instrument for an action.

The use of language is also governed by two layers of inferencing, each bearing a different relationship to the encoded meaning. There is an internal inferencing layer which plays an active role in the ideation of complex meanings - it is not a pragmatic device but a systematic semantic resource for processes such as ambiguity resolution. The external inferencing layer connects meaningful expressions to occasional messages; as a consequences, communication does not only involve linguistic expressions, but also more general patterns of human interaction.

The double nature of inferencing - based on conceptual structures or on contextual information - draws new boundaries between semantics and pragmatics: semantic description reaches far beyond coding without dissolving into pragmatics. Also in Recanati (2004), there are primary pragmatic processes and secondary pragmatics processes and this distinction can shed light on the way meanings are modulated in context without invoking radical contextualism (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995).

Part II: The conceptual factors of significance: Consistency criteria, lexical structures, cognitive models, and data

Through the lens of philosophical grammar, the lexicon is both a formal, language-specific structure, but also a functional repository of substantive definitions with cognitive content. Lexical meanings are concepts, socially shared models of things and situations that are determined by the interplay of language-specific and more general, cognitive criteria of categorization.

Lexical well-formedness, the result of the use of words according to language-specific lexical restrictions, is governed by consistency criteria. The function of consistency criteria is to delimit the area of consistent concepts, and it is within this area that lexical structures draw language-specific boundaries and impose language-specific constraints.

Consistency criteria are presented as set of background assumptions underlying our behaviour, discourse, and knowledge. We have basic presuppositions: both the sun and the sky are allowed to have a colour while an idea is not, a piece of wood is an inanimate being which cannot feel pain. These presuppositions form a natural ontology, a grammar of concepts. In other words, they are a formal classification of entities (individuals and classes of individuals, masses and instances of masses, properties and processes), which is independent of the properties subsequently attributed to these concepts. Consistency criteria resemble cognitive models because they are insensitive to experience, but they are different because the sharing of consistency criteria is a necessary condition for conceptual lawfulness. They are also constitutive of a cultural community: subconscious and automatic inferences that depend on the way society and culture are organized can be conceived as a social cultural defaults (Jaszczolt 2005). To sum up, consistency criteria are logically preliminary to both lexical and cognitive modelling.

Part III: The ideation of complex meanings: Simple sentence, interclausal links, conflictual complex meanings

A series of linguistic tools permit the expression of complex meanings: the sentence, interclausal links, and tropes. A complex meaning is based on two opposite and complementary principles: both complex linguistic expressions and complex concepts have an independent syntax of their own.

Interclausal linkage is the relation between two or more independent simple clauses that form together a complex sentence. The expression of interclausal relations as cause, concession or purpose can use heterogeneous linguistic means, not just complex sentences. However, interclausal links between sentences are possible especially thanks to prepositions. Prepositions can express very different formal and functional properties, ranging from the semantically light relation between a verb and its prepositional complement to a full lexical word. In each case, the preposition contributes to the expression of a certain concept.

In the final chapter, Prandi analyze tropes from the standpoint of his philosophical grammar: they are conflictual complex meanings which possess grammatical structure and semantic content. Even inconsistent complex meanings such as metaphors are not deviations from a norm, but instead contitute a phenomenon to study the interaction between formal linguistic structures and conceptual structures. Metaphor is conceived as an independent conceptual structure brought to expression by linguistic form, but also as semantic structure imposed on concepts. It can be triggered by two different kind of conflicts: by lexical conflicts and/or cognitive conflicts that only affect the surface of concepts without challenging their consistency and by ontological conflicts which defies the essential properties of beings, as inconsistent linguistic expressions break conceptual boundaries.

Evaluation

Prandi's book is a deep and exhaustive introduction to a philosophical approach to grammar. The conceptual structures that are said to underlie verbal communication are not conceived of as the object of cognitive psychology: they have a clear philosophical nature, and so they are appealing but not easy to grasp. What exactly are consistency criteria? How can they be discovered? Even if it could be plausible to believe in a close relationship between an ontological theory and a theory of meaning, as asserted by Bianchi and Bottani (2003), how should this link be understood? How should semantic types and ontological categories be mapped? Other open questions are: If consistency criteria are not contents of knowledge but silent presuppositions, we can just imagine them as an external force on lexical items. So, it appears that the main task is not to discover consistency criteria and to give them an explicit formulation, but instead to find their effects on appropriate lexical representations.

References

Jaszczolt, K. M. (2005), Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Recanati, F. (2004), Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1986/1995), Relevance, Communication and Cognition. Oxford: B. Blackwell.

Strawson, P. (1959), Individuals. London: Routledge.

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