Language Antinomies and Language Operations of the Mind

This paper presents new inference techniques about language based on my theory of linguistic antinomies––pairs of apparently contradictory statements that complement each other. Since the cells, that is, the basic units of language are signs, the antinomies of language are the antinomies of signs and sign combinations. 1. Antinomy of the existence of language as part of the mind I take the concept of the sign as an explication of the everyday notion of the sign. A sign is sound (or an operation on sounds, like their ordering or alternation) functioning as a surrogate of a thing. What is called the meaning of a sign is the thing of which the sign is a surrogate. The thing taken as the meaning of a sign is not something like a table or a house, but it may also be the sky, rotation, or love. Linguistic signs are morphemes and words. In current linguistic literature the function of a surrogate is not mentioned in connection with the concept of the sign. But I claim that the intrinsic nature of the sign is in its function of being the surrogate of a thing. It is due to this function of the sign that people are able to communicate. This is shown by an imaginative passage in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which can be taken as a mental experiment. The funny " Voyage to Balnibarbi " [1] describes the grand academy of Lagado. The academy proposed to entirely abolish all words whatsoever and replace them by things. This scheme was designed to improve communication and promote the health of lungs. The only inconvenience was that communicating with things rather than words required carrying things, and for this the academicians hired strong servants. What are the antinomies of language, or linguistic antinomies? Let us start with the antinomy of the psychological and the social aspects of language. Any language exists in the minds of individuals using it. Language involves psychological processes characterizing language as a psychological phenomenon. The knowledge of language is the intuitive or explicit knowledge of signs and their meanings and of the rules of sign combinations. On the other hand, we may notice that an individual is not free to chose the meanings of signs and the rules of their combinations. Unless the meanings of signs and the rules of their combination are the same for all individuals using the same language, communication …