Wolfgang Wildgen presents three perspectives on the evolution of language as a key element in the evolution of mankind in terms of the development of human symbol use. (1) He approaches this question by constructing possible scenarios in which mechanisms necessary for symbolic behavior could have… read more
The general topic of this book is the development of a “realistic” model of meaning; it has to account for the ecological basis of meaning in perception, action, and interaction, and is realistic in the sense of “scientific realism”, i.e. it is based on the most successful paradigm of modern… read more
René Thom, the famous French mathematician and founder of catastrophe theory, considered linguistics an exemplary field for the application of his general morphology. It is surprising that physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists and sociologists are all engaged in the field of catastrophe… read more
Essay(s) by Herman Parret, Leo Apostel, Paul Gochet, Maurice Van Overbeke, Oswald Ducrot, Liliane Tasmowski-De Ryck, Norbert Dittmar et Wolfgang Wildgen
Les lois générales gouvernant la formation des théories sont valable dans la pragmatique comme partout ailleurs où se manifeste l’ambition théorique. La méthodologie adequate, ici come ailleurs, est plutôt celle de la reconstruction et de la découverte que celle de la description et de… read more
The historical roots of the propositional versus the imagistic view on meaning in perception and language can be found in Aristotle’s Categories and in the medieval and Renaissance models for mnemonic networks of sign systems (Lullus, Bruno). The architecture of sensibility and meaning has been… read more
Various features of the space of semantic conceptualization, and specifically position, obstacles, path and motion, are discussed in the essay. These characteristics of conceptual space are applied to the dynamics of field semantics on the basis of concepts from Gestalt theory. Wildgen’s main… read more
