Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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188473

Token-reflexive words versus proper names

Tadeusz Czeżowski

pp. 65-72

Abstract

Token-reflexive words (the term originates with H. Reichenbach, Elements of Symbolic Logic, 1947; B. Russell's term was "egocentric particulars", cf. his Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits, 1948; the problem seems to have been first taken up by E. Husserl in his Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, 1901, where the term used is "okkasionelle Ausdrücke"), like the personal pronouns "T", "you", the demonstrative pronouns "this", "that", the time and place indicators "now", "today", "here", etc., are names which change their respective meanings according to who utters them and under what circumstances. Hence they are mainly used to denote certain objects temporarily, during the utterance of a given sentence, even though they may be used repeatedly and even regularly to denote one and the same object; for example, a person regularly uses the pronoun T whenever he refers to himself. We link them with the denoted object by indicating that object in various ways (linguists call them ostensive or deictic names), and hence they are singular names. But if we denote a certain object at a certain moment by a given token-reflexive name, this does not preclude our using the same name, at some other moment, to denote some other object, not identical with the former. It is as if a token-reflexive name, lacking a constant meaning of its own, acquires one only temporarily and as it were derivatively as a result of the indication, by its user, of its designatum.

Publication details

Published in:

Pelc Jerzy (1979) Semiotics in Poland 1984–1969. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 65-72

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9777-6_10

Full citation:

Czeżowski Tadeusz (1979) „Token-reflexive words versus proper names“, In: J. Pelc (ed.), Semiotics in Poland 1984–1969, Dordrecht, Springer, 65–72.