Publication Details

Abstract

Language can be modeled in various ways, highlighting either its social or systemic character. I assume that language is a normative phenomenon enabling speakers to communicate. At any particular time language is used, however, we are capable of determining the function which maps the expressions produced using this language to their meanings. In this contribution I propose a functional model of language in a synchronic sense. This model also resolves various complications with ambivalence, etc. Further, I also propose a model of language in a diachronic sense as a function from possible worlds and time instants to languages in a synchronic sense. Thus the intuitive idea of language as a changing entity is captured. Both models are constructed to be the tools serving mainly the investigation of semantic properties of expressions of that language.