Linguistic Signs, Meaning & Empirical Knowledge
Zhu Zhi · Wuhan University Journal · 2003
It is suggested that the meaning sentence, which states the meaning of a linguistic sign, is not analytical as is assumed by philosophers of language or semioticians in the Anglo\|American tradition of analytical philosophy ,but a special kind of empirical statement of knowledge. With the suggestion, description theory of meaning is transvalued, and causal theory of meaning is shown to be implausible without appeal to descriptions. Furthermore, a notion of semiotic circle is coined in such a way that the sense and reference of a term is interdependent, which entails the compatibility of description theory with causal theory.