ABSTRACT
Some fifteen years ago, I had the agreeable opportunity to give a talk, later published under the title of ‘A semantics of utterance’ (Shwayder 1977). In that paper I sought to adapt some thoughts I had had about the nature of language to the semantic analysis of ‘speech acts’ or (as I prefer) ‘utterance’. My analysis suggested mechanisms for the resolution or ‘parsing’ of utterances into complementary sememic factors and principles for the association of these into larger complexes. At that time, I was taken by the wishful thought that these ideas just might be serviceable, as a semantics, to linguists interested in lexicography and ‘universal grammar’ or to those other linguists who might have been curious about a simple mechanism for the ‘downward’ sememic identification of those tagmemic and morphemic factors of their accustomed and traditional commerce or to ‘pragmaticists’ curious to see a not so simple ‘upward’ application of semantic mechanisms to the explanation of usage, especially the figurative adaptation of usage. High aspirations, and no takers so far.
