ONT Re: Resolved: To Clearly Distinguish Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics
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Right out of the starting blocks to inquiry,
most can already see the next trouble ahead.
I picked up the words "syntax", "semantics",
"pragmatics" because they have a widespread
popular reception, but I chose them with no
negligible fear and trembling and [sic]ness,
nigh unto the immanent death of hopèd sense.
As most folks know by now, these words came
into that above-noted popular reception via
Charles Morris not Charles Peirce, and with
them comes in a motley crew of intellectual
impedimenta like none we would ever welcome,
that is, if we saw ahead of time what havoc
they were capable of wreaking on all of our
ersatz or erstwhile tokens of promising and
good intentsions, respectively. So I shall
continue to emploit these tentative tenders
solely on the pains of staking this proviso:
that we promise to maintain as much liberty
in our interpretive reguard for these three
principalities as we would any other modest
working frameworks of communal constitution.
Thus, with that preamble now out of the way,
I hope that we might gingerly amble forward ...
Jon Awbrey
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