This paper examines Tarskian semantics from the point of view of grammar. The author focuses on syntactic constructions available in languages used by Tarski, investigated by means borrowed from categorial grammar. He also tried to make the concept of truth, as defined by Tarski, closer to ordinary language.

A large part of philosophical analysis deals with the problem of how language relates to reality. It is assumed that language speaks—or at least may speak—about something, about one or another kind of reality. It speaks truthfully or falsely, with cohesion or with confusion, with precision or loosely, penetratingly or without much depth, assertively, hypothetically, optatively, interrogatively or in some other way, about the real or supposed world. The so-called “real world” is perhaps amorphous, in flux, continuous and indivisible. Language, (...) on the other hand, is usually viewed as well organized, strict, discrete, and decomposable into its generators. But it is an old, Platonic view that the structure of language reflects the structure of the world. (shrink)

To the philosopher, the logician, and the linguist, questions have a special fascination. The two main views of language, that it describes the world, and that it expresses thought, are not directly applicable to questions. Ques tions are not assertions. A question may be apt, sharp, to the point, impor tant, or it may be inappropriate, ambiguous, awkward, irrelevant or irreverent. But it cannot be true or false. It does not have a truth value not just because an utterance like (...) Was the letter long? does not indicate which letter is being talked about. The indicative The letter was not long has the same indeter minacy. In actual context the anaphoric definite article will be resolved both for a question and for an indicative sentence. Contextual resolutions are easily found for most cross-references. A question cannot be either true or it does not describe a state of affairs. Neither does it express false, because thought, because it is an expression of suspended thought, of lack of judge ment. To dress it in other philosophical styles, a question is not a judgment, it is not a proposition, it is not an assertion. A philosopher may try to paraphrase a question as an indicative sentence, for instance as a statement of ignorance, or as a statement of the desire to know. Hintikka, Wachowicz and Lang explore this territory. Or he may interpret it as a meta statement intimating the direction in which the flow of the discourse is going. (shrink)