Displaying 1 - 11 of 11
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Jaspers, D., & Seuren, P. A. M. (2016). The Square of opposition in catholic hands: A chapter in the history of 20th-century logic. Logique et Analyse, 59(233), 1-35.
Abstract
The present study describes how three now almost forgotten mid-20th-century logicians, the American Paul Jacoby and the Frenchmen Augustin Sesmat and Robert Blanché, all three ardent Catholics, tried to restore traditional predicate logic to a position of respectability by expanding the classic Square of Opposition to a hexagon of logical relations, showing the logical and cognitive advantages of such an expansion. The nature of these advantages is discussed in the context of modern research regarding the relations between logic, language, and cognition. It is desirable to call attention to these attempts, as they are, though almost totally forgotten, highly relevant against the backdrop of the clash between modern and traditional logic. It is argued that this clash was and is unnecessary, as both forms of predicate logic are legitimate, each in its own right. The attempts by Jacoby, Sesmat, and Blanché are, moreover, of interest to the history of logic in a cultural context in that, in their own idiosyncratic ways, they fit into the general pattern of the Catholic cultural revival that took place roughly between the years 1840 and 1960. The Catholic Church had put up stiff resistance to modern mathematical logic, considering it dehumanizing and a threat to Catholic doctrine. Both the wider cultural context and the specific implications for logic are described and analyzed, in conjunction with the more general philosophical and doctrinal issues involved. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2016). Excursies in de tijd: Episodes uit de geschiedenis van onze beschaving. Beilen: Pharos uitgevers.
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Seuren, P. A. M. (2016). Saussure and his intellectual environment. History of European Ideas, 42(6), 819-847. doi:10.1080/01916599.2016.1154398.
Abstract
The present study paints the intellectual environment in which Ferdinand de Saussure developed his ideas about language and linguistics during the fin de siècle. It sketches his dissatisfaction with that environment to the extent that it touched on linguistics, and shows the new course he was trying to steer on the basis of ideas that seemed to open new and exciting perspectives, even though they were still vaguely defined. As Saussure himself was extremely reticent about his sources and intellectual pedigree, his stance in the lively European cultural context in which he lived can only be established through textual critique and conjecture. On this basis, it is concluded that Saussure, though relatively uninformed about its historical roots, essentially aimed at integrating the rationalist tradition current in the sciences in his day into a new, ‘scientific’ general theory of language. In this, he was heavily indebted to a few predecessors, such as the French philosopher-psychologist Victor Egger, and particularly to the French psychologist, historian and philosopher Hippolyte Taine, who was a major cultural influence in nineteenth-century France, though now largely forgotten. The present study thus supports Hans Aarsleff's analysis, where, for the first time, Taine's influence is emphasised, and rejects John Joseph's contention that Taine had no influence and that, instead, Saussure was influenced mainly by the romanticist Adolphe Pictet. Saussure abhorred Pictet's method of etymologising, which predated the Young Grammarian school, central to Saussure's linguistic education. The issue has implications for the positioning of Saussure in the history of linguistics. Is he part of the non-analytical, romanticist and experience-based European strand of thought that is found in art and postmodernist philosophy and is sometimes called structuralism, or is he a representative of the short-lived European branch of specifically linguistic structuralism, which was rationalist in outlook, more science-oriented and more formalist, but lost out to American structuralism? The latter seems to be the case, though phenomenology, postmodernism and art have lately claimed Saussure as an icon -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2015). Prestructuralist and structuralist approaches to syntax. In T. Kiss, & A. Alexiadou (
Eds. ), Syntax--theory and analysis: An international handbook (pp. 134-157). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2015). Taal is complexer dan je denkt - recursief. In S. Lestrade, P. De Swart, & L. Hogeweg (
Eds. ), Addenda. Artikelen voor Ad Foolen (pp. 393-400). Nijmegen: Radboud University. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2015). Unconscious elements in linguistic communication: Language and social reality. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 6, 185-194. doi:10.1386/ejpc.6.2.185_1.
Abstract
The message of the present article is, first, that, besides and below the strictly linguistic aspects of communication through language, of which speakers are in principle fully aware, a great deal of knowledge not carried in virtue of the system of the language in question but rather transmitted by the form of the intended message, is imparted to listeners or readers, without either being in the least aware of this happening. For example, listeners quickly register the social status, regional origin or emotional attitude of speakers and they react to those kinds of ‘paralinguistic’ information, mostly totally unawares. When speaker and listener have a positive attitude with regard to each other, the reaction consists, among other things, in mutual alignment or accommodation of pronunciation features, lexical selections and style of speaking. When the mutual attitude is negative, the opposite happens: speakers accentuate their differences. Then, when this happens not between individual interlocutors but between groups of speakers, such accommodation or divergence phenomena may lead to language change. The main theoretical question raised, but not answered, in this article is how and at what point forms of behaviour, including linguistic behaviour, achieve the status of being ‘standard’ or ‘accepted’ in any given community and what it means to say that they are ‘standard’ or ‘accepted’. It is argued that frequency of occurrence is not the main explanatory factor, and that a causal explanation is to be sought rather in the, often unconscious, attitudes of individuals, in particular their desire or need to be integrated members of a community or social group, thus ensuring their safety and asserting their group identity. The question thus belongs to the province of social psychology. Qualms about analyses of this kind being ‘unscientific’ dissipate when it is realized that consciousness phenomena are part of the real world and must therefore be considered to be valid objects of scientific theory formation. Like so many other ill-understood elements in scientific theories, consciousness, though itself unexplained, can be given a place in causal chains of events. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Pseudoarguments and pseudocomplements. In B. Nevin (
Ed. ), The legacy of Zellig Harris: Language and information into the 21st Century: 1 Philosophy of Science, Syntax, and Semantics (pp. 179-206). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). The logic of thinking. Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Mededelingen van de Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, 65(9), 5-35.
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Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Clitic clusters in French and Italian. In H. Jacobs, & L. Wetzels (
Eds. ), Liber Amicorum Bernard Bichakjian (pp. 217-233). Maastricht: Shaker. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Existential import. In D. De Jongh, M. Nilsenová, & H. Zeevat (
Eds. ), Proceedings of The 3rd and 4th International Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation. Amsterdam: ILLC Scientific Publ. U. of Amsterdam. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). [Review of the book Indigenous Grammar Across Cultures ed. by Hannes Kniffka]. Linguistics, 40(5), 1090-1096.
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