A Bridge Between Semantics And Pragmatics

Language is double-natured: LANGUE and PAROLE. By LANGUE it is intrinsic, abstract and static, only existing in the mind of a language community; by PAROLE it is extrinsic, a concrete tool for communication leaned and used by individual speakers.A sentence is the condensate of a language's double natures. On the one hand itis an abstract unit (underlying individuals' speaking) in language system-strictly regular in structure: it is termed a syncteme in the thesis. On the other hand it is a dynamic unit (activizing and actualizing the absolute rule of the intrinsic system) for communication. Varying in form, it may be a full sentence, a fragment or simply a single word etc.: we call it an utterance (termed an allosynct in the thesis). A syncteme is systematically related with its corresponding allosynct(s), the former underlying the latter, while the latter realizing the former.It is just this double-nature that causes the separation of pragmatics from semantics. And also it is this double-nature that in return enables a sentence to function as a bridge between the two subdisciplines.For a sentence to change from a syncteme to an allosynt is a transformation. The transformation is both spontaneous and simultaneous. Meanwhile it is more atransition - a process in which meanings are being realized from "bivalent" to"trivalent".A sentence is the bearer of all meanings. The transition is in essence therealization of meanings from semantics to pragmatics. A sentence proper is the medium that helps the realization: from prepositional meaning to literal meaning and to utterance meaning. In this sense a sentence is a bridge between semantics and pragmatics.This thesis presents a new approach to the "bridge" function of a sentence between semantics and pragmatics by:1) demonstrating, by virtue of Saussure's theory of LANGUE and PAROLE, the systematicality between a syncteme and an allosynct, which is just like drawing an auxiliary line in a geometric demonstration and2) demonstrating that a syncteme belongs with semantics while an allosynct with pragmatics, and more3) demonstrating the realization of types of meanings in the transition from semantics to pragmatics, and last4) demonstrating the complementarity in the transition between the two subdisciplines------ semantics and pragmatics.