著者

SAKAI Tomohiro

出版者

東京大学大学院人文社会系研究科・文学部言語学研究室

雑誌

東京大学言語学論集 = Tokyo University linguistic papers (TULIP) (ISSN:13458663)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.38, no.1, pp.247-270, 2017-09-30

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Whereas Frege’s impact on modern semantics (and pragmatics) is uncontroversial, it is generally assumed that the scope of the Fregean framework is confined to formal semantics (and pragmatics) as opposed to cognitive semantics, or more broadly, cognitive linguistics. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Frege’s notion of sense/thought (Sinn/Gedanke) is compatible with Langacker’s notion of construal. Appearances notwithstanding, it turns out that the two frameworks are largely compatible. As regards singular terms like “the morning star” / “the evening star”, the compatibility of the two models is indisputable; the sense/construal of a singular term corresponds to a particular way of thinking or viewing its reference. Even though Frege’s position on predicates like “horse” / “steed” is not so straightforward, his model can be, based on some textual evidence, construed in such a way as to be no less fine-grained than Langacker’s. The parallel between sense and construal finally collapses, however, when grammatical constructions appear on the scene. Although he detects differing meaning in pairs of truth-conditionally equivalent sentences, Frege relegates it to the realm of the tone, a realm which belongs to “what is beautiful in language” or “poetic eloquence”. If, despite Frege’s notorious dichotomy between science/logic and fiction/poetry, the integration of the tone with the sense is feasible, then Frege may count as one of the founders, albeit a marginal one, of cognitive linguistics, in that he explicitly provided, more than one century ago, detailed descriptions of those aspects of meaning that cognitivists are pursuing today.