Syntactic Connexion

Introduction

The paper appeared in 1935 in the first volume of “Studia Philosophica” (Lwów). Taking up Husserl’s categories of meaning and Leśniewski’s semantic categories, Ajdukiewicz assigns each expression either a basic category – sentence or name – or a functor category written as a fraction, such as s/n for a predicate that turns a name into a sentence. A simple calculation that cancels categories like fractions then shows whether a string of expressions forms a syntactically connected whole. In the 1950s Yehoshua Bar-Hillel adapted the notation for natural language and Joachim Lambek gave it a calculus; categorial grammar became one of the foundations of formal semantics, including Richard Montague’s.

More works by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

• 1934Language and Meaning