Abstract

There are three essential I want to get across in this article in addition to the analysis of relations of nonlinguistic to linguistic intentionality. First I want to emphasize how the structure of prelinguistic intentionality enables us to solve the problems of the relation of reference and predication and the problem of the unity of the proposition. The second point is about deontology. The basic intellectual motivation that drives this second part of his argument is the following: there is something left out of the standard textbook accounts of language as consisting of syntax, semantics and phonology with an extra-linguistic pragmatics thrown in. Basically what is left out is the essential element of commitment involved in having a set of conventional devices that encode the imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction. The third part of the article is about the creation of a social and institutional ontology by linguistically representing certain facts as existing, thus creating the facts. When we understand this third point we will get a deeper insight into the constitutive role of language in the construction of society and social institutions.