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UNIPA Springer Series
Mauro Giuffrè
Text Linguistics
and Classical
Studies
Dressler and de Beaugrande’s
Procedural Approach
Editor-in-chief
Carlo Amenta, Department of Economics, Management and Statistics Sciences,
University of Palermo, Italy
Series editors
Sebastiano Bavetta, Department of Economics, University of Palermo, Italy
Calogero Caruso, Department of Pathobiology, University of Palermo, Italy
Gioacchino Lavanco, Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Italy
Bruno Maresca, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Salerno,
Italy
Andreas Öchsner, Department of Engineering and Information Technology, Griffith
University, Australia
Mariacristina Piva, Department of Economic and Social Sciences, Catholic
University of the Sacred Heart, Italy
Roberto Pozzi Mucelli, Department of Diagnostics and Public Health, University of
Verona, Italy
Antonio Restivo, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of
Palermo, Italy
Norbert M. Seel, Department of Education, University of Freiburg, Germany
Gaspare Viviani, Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Italy
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13175
Mauro Giuffrè
Text Linguistics
and Classical Studies
Dressler and de Beaugrande’s Procedural
Approach
123
Mauro Giuffrè
Department of Human Sciences
University of Palermo
Palermo
Italy
ISSN 2366-7516 ISSN 2366-7524 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-319-47930-9 ISBN 978-3-319-47931-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47931-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955076
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

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Contents
1 Alle Wege Führen Zum Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Text in the Beginning: Structural and Generative Linguistics . . . . . 2
Structural Linguistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Generative Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Text from a Logical Point of View: the Linguistic Turn . . . . . . . . . 15
Generative Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Model-Theoretic Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The Text in Text Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Text Linguistics and Its Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
The Development of Text Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2 The Procedural Approach to Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Point of View of Dressler and de Beaugrande . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
The Scope of Cognitive Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Cognitive Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Linguistic and Philosophical Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Procedural Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
The Procedural Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Text Production and Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Communicative Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Regulative Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
The Concept of Textuality in the Procedural Approach:
Seven Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Cohesion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Intentionality and Acceptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Informativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
v
vi Contents
Situationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Intertextuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3 The Procedural Approach to a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Rhetoric, Cognitive Psychology and Ancient Literary Genres . . . . . . . . . 76
Titus Livius and the Gallic Sack of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Cohesion and Coherence in Livius, Ab Urbe Condita V, 44 . . . . . . . . . . 89
Cohesion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Conclusions of This Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Chapter 1
Alle Wege Führen Zum Text
Towards an empirically motivated

grammatical theory of verbal texts.
János Sándor Petőfi, Studies in Text Grammar
In a naive sort of way, the concept of text and its definition are already rather clear.
In fact, everyone has an intuitive concept of what a text is. However, like other
linguistic concepts that have the same sort of spontaneity (e.g., sentence or utter-
ance) the concept appears to be less than precise. In common usage, as in the
non-specialized scientific disciplines, the term is mostly used to refer to linguistic
utterances. In this restrictive sense, a text is the physical manifestation (written or
oral) of a message sent by an issuer to one or more recipients so that it can be
subjected to interpretation and then understood. However, the complexity of the
definition increases significantly in a specialized dictionary, such as A Dictionary of
Linguistics and Phonetics:
A pre-theoretical term used in LINGUISTICS and PHONETICS to refer to a stretch of
language recorded for the purpose of analysis and description. What is important to note is
that texts may refer to collections of written or spoken material (the latter having been
transcribed in some way), e.g. conversation, monologues, rituals and so on. The term
textual meaning is sometimes used in semantics as part of a classification of types of
MEANING, referring to those factors affecting the interpretation of a SENTENCE which
derive from the rest of text in which the sentence occurs - as when, at a particular point in a
play or novel, a sentence or word appears whose significance can only be appreciated in the
light of what has gone before. The study of texts has become a defining feature of a branch
of linguistics referred to (especially in Europe) as textlinguistics, and ‘text’ here has central
theoretical status. Texts are seen as language units which have a definable communicative
function, characterized by such principles as COHESION, COHERENCE and informa-
tiveness, which can be used to provide a FORMAL definition of what constitutes their
identifying textuality or texture. On the basis of these principles, texts are classified into
text types, or genres, such as road signs, news reports, poems, conversations, etc. The
approach overlaps considerably with that practised under the name of DISCOURSE
analysis, and some linguists see very little difference between them. But usage varies
greatly. Some linguists make a distinction between the notions of ‘text’, viewed as a
physical ‘product’, and ‘discourse’, viewed as a dynamic process of expression and
interpretation, whose function and mode of operation can be investigated using
PSYCHOLINGUISTIC and SOCIOLINGUISTIC, as well as linguistic, techniques.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

M. Giuffrè, Text Linguistics and Classical Studies,
UNIPA Springer Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47931-6_1
2 1 Alle Wege Führen Zum Text
A similar distinction sees ‘text’ as a notion which applies to SURFACE STRUCTURE,

whereas ‘discourse’ applies to DEEP STRUCTURE. From the opposite viewpoint, some
linguists have defined ‘text’ as an abstract notion, ‘discourse’ being its REALIZATION.
Apart from these theoretical distinctions, there is also a tendency for texts to be thought of
as monologues, usually written, and often very short (e.g. no through road), whereas
discourses are often thought of as dialogues, usually spoken and of greater length. (Crystal
2006, dictionary entry TEXT)
When one tries to define the ‘text’ object in a scientific manner, the complexity
of the definition increases; it also varies according to the discipline to which the
definition refers. Although an integrated framework is still lacking that allows the
complex object called ‘text’ to be investigated in a firmly established multidisci-
plinary perspective, linguistics is the discipline that has taken on the task of pro-
viding this definition because, since they are linguistic artefacts, texts belong to the
field of analysis of this discipline. For many years, which scientific discipline
should deal with texts was not established, and only in relatively recent times has
linguistics taken up this task. Indeed, at first it did not recognize the text as a subject
of analysis.
Modern linguistics, which developed in Europe and the United States, consid-
ered the sentence as the maximum level of analysis. Progressively, the domain of
linguistic research expanded to include the text on an ongoing basis, and in the
twentieth century in Europe and the United States, text linguistics was configured as
a separate discipline.
The Text in the Beginning: Structural and Generative

Linguistics
Scientific linguistics did not establish the text as its object of study at the outset; it
concerned itself with sentences as the highest level of analysis. Therefore, in
accordance to the maximum level of analysis that it was pursuing, it could be called
sentence linguistics. As regards the methods used for analysis, these can be divided
into structural and generative linguistics.
Structural linguistics analyses the expressions of a natural language according to
different levels of minimum units. The levels are the phonological, morphological,
syntactic and semantic, which pertain, respectively, to the following minimum
units: “phoneme”, “morpheme”, “syntagmeme” and “sememe”. Generative lin-
guistics on the other hand aims to create well-formed expressions in a natural
language thanks to a system of rules of re-writing that work recursively. In a
narrower sense, a generative grammar is a formal mechanism that operates from a
four-part base (“alphabet of terminal symbols”, “alphabet of nonterminal symbols”,
“axioms of grammar” and “production rules”) to produce phrases.
The first type of linguistics has its celebrated πρῶτος εὑρετής in Ferdinand de
Saussure, and finds its greatest exponents in scholars such as Benveniste and
The Text in the Beginning: Structural and Generative Linguistics 3
Hjelmslev. Outside of Europe, structural linguistics developed in the course of the

twentieth century in the United States, too, where it gave birth to generative
linguistics.
Structural Linguistics
In Europe, the founder of what came to be called structural linguistics was

Ferdinand de Saussure. Although he was a refined comparativist, as is clear from
his fundamental work Mémoire (1879), and a tenacious student of anagrams,
Ferdinand de Saussure owes his fame to Cours de linguistique générale (1916),
published by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Besides a few
interpretation problems that remain open today, all the textbooks and manuals of
history of linguistics present this author as the most representative, but, like all
fathers of the various disciplines, de Saussure is universally seen today as an
inimitable model and as the source of all the limits of linguistic research.
The role of pater linguisticae that is unanimously attributed to him stems from his
idea of language, which we would like to explain by using a metaphor taken from a
game: he himself compared language to a game of chess (a game which de Saussure
loved). In this game, the various pieces do not have an absolute value, but rather a
value based on the fact that each is different from another and performs and functions
differently within the game. Some pieces are interchangeable (for example, a red
piece may be replaced by a blue one), but the game continues as long as the pieces
constitute a valid configuration within the game. Therefore, the game continues as
long as the rules are not broken; conversely, the game ends instantly.
Metaphors aside, the game is language, the pieces are the minimum units (on the
various linguistic levels) and the rules are the grammar of a natural language. The
great merit of de Saussure is to have conceived of a concrete idea concerning the
study of languages and to have maintained that language could be studied as a
system. To sum up, his conception can be called structural linguistics.
The core of the Genevan linguist’s thought is summarized in well-known text-
books and manuals through a few famous dichotomies, signifiant versus signifié,
langue versus parole, syntagmatic versus associative, synchronic versus diachronic.
The first dichotomy is internal to the linguistic sign. The linguistic sign is
constituted by the union of “concept” and “acoustic image”; the relationship
between these two parts is arbitrary (and not necessary). In fact, there is no reason
why the sound image of the word tree should refer to the concept ‘tree’ better than
the sound image of arbor. It should be noted that all segnic models elaborated later
are dependent on some form of “Saussurism”.1
1
For example, both the model of signs developed by Hjelmslev and that of Petőfi have this
characteristic in common. However, only Petőfi asserts that the communicative situation is
determined both by the signifiant and the signifié.
The second dichotomy is perhaps the most controversial. Indeed, it has been
explained as both the opposition between abstract and concrete, and between code
and speech act, and as between social and individual dimensions. The last of these
ways of understanding the dichotomy appears particularly interesting because in
Saussure’s vision, langue falls fully into the realm of linguistic research, while the
parole is excluded.2
The third dichotomy opposes “syntagmatic” to “associative” and refers to the
fact that the various linguistic elements can relate to each other in different ways
within a communication; this ability has a dual nature. An initial relationship, stated
in praesentia, regards the terms that cannot be present simultaneously within the
same word phrase, because a given substance cannot be qualified simultaneously by
both elements (for example, the adjectives “black” and “white” cannot be used
simultaneously in relation to the same substance, because skin is either white or
black). The two adjectives given as example may, however, be unrelated in
absentia, because white and black evoke each other (one being the opposite of the
other).3 This dichotomy can be extensively applied to the various levels of the
language system (phonetic and morphological as well as syntactic and lexical), but
it remains difficult to fit it completely within the conceptual system developed by
Saussure.4
The fourth and final dichotomy opposes synchrony and diachrony. This dis-
tinction intends to highlight the distance between the study of language as a system
and the study of the evolution of a natural language over time. With this dichotomy
de Saussure gave linguistic science a revolutionary formulation for his time, though
it now appears “classic”. Indeed, linguistics had been placed until then in the
domain of the “human sciences”, but now became part of the domain of the “hard
sciences”. It should be remembered that at the time of Saussure’s teachings, the
only form of linguistics that could consider itself scientific was historical and
comparative linguistics (to which Saussure himself gave a fundamental contribu-
tion, especially in his Mémoire). In contrast to the mainstream, Saussure’s ideas
brought the synchronic perspective to the fore. This approach clearly demonstrates
Saussure’s desire to place language within the domain of the Exact Sciences
(Naturwissenschaften) rather than define it as part of the Humanities
(Geisteswissenschaften). This has been consided a reflection of both the linguist’s
2
Chomsky, as we shall see later, founded his own reflection on the dichotomy competence versus
performance, which often has been associated with the opposition of the Genevan linguist.
Competence in Chomsky’s sense, however, is universal and innate in man; langue in Saussure’s
sense, on the other hand, is social and historically determined.
3
The term “associative” was replaced by Hjelmslev with the term “paradigmatic” in an attempt to
eliminate the halo of psychology inherent in Saussure’s term.
4
The extensive application of this Saussurian dichotomy allowed Roman Jakobson to classify a
number of phenomena in the categories provided by de Saussure: figures of speech
(metonymy = syntagmatic, metaphor = paradigmatic), the literary genres (prose = syntagmatic;
poetry = paradigmatic), aphasic disorders (linear order of words = syntagmatic; choice of
words = paradigmatic).
family tradition, which contained noteworthy exponents in the fields of chemistry

and physics, and his early studies in these fields (Hjelmslev’s father, too, as we shall
see below, was devoted to geometry). Beyond the question of the origin of this
perspective, the historiography of linguistics conserves the fact that de Saussure
promoted this perspective in the interest of making the study of language scientific.
This perspective is in fact a starting point for the diachronic study perspective,
because a study of the evolution of language can be made only by having a notion
of the functional categories that organize a language into a system.
The evaluation of this dichotomy is particularly dependent on the “position” that
scholars assume today with respect to linguistics. First, it is important to point out
that one cannot avoid taking a position, whatever it is, with respect to this issue.
Even scholars of the school of Prague consider the “synchrony versus diachrony”
opposition too rigid. In our view, the synchronic point of view seems intrinsically
linked to the diachronic perspective, so much so that one is inseparable from the
other. It should certainly be kept in mind that historiographical paradigms of
twentieth-century linguistics can be drawn only by giving a value to this opposition
and only in the light of the position taken with respect to this dichotomy.
Deeply convinced of the value of the exact sciences, Ferdinand de Saussure
suggested that the scientific study of language should resemble the study of
chemistry and physics more than that of history. As long as this is the prevailing
perspective in linguistics, linguists will continue to identify themselves as heirs to
the point of view of the Genevan linguist. This is evidenced by the existence of the
category referred to as “post-Saussurian” in the various textbooks and manuals of
history of linguistics and by the fact that “Saussurism” is the lowest common
denominator of theoretical linguistic perspectives of the twentieth century: struc-
tural linguistics, generative linguistics and text linguistics.
Structural linguistics, born thanks to a Swiss scholar, grew and developed on
French soil. Émile Benveniste was a French linguist, and in a certain sense a
pioneer in the field of text linguistics. Benveniste’s production is vast, so it is
difficult to give a quick overview without doing the author an injustice. In a very
general way, one can say that he divided his commitment equally between historical
linguistic research and general linguistics. The first area, his historical research,
culminated in the publication of Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes
(1969), while the second area is well represented by an important collection of
articles entitled Problèmes de linguistique générale (vol. I 1966, vol. II 1974). This
anthology contains contributions regarding the examination of modern languages,
the status of linguistics as an autonomous discipline and the relationship between
structural linguistics, analytical logic and psychoanalysis.
Benveniste’s position is not that of an orthodox structuralist, unlike Hjelmslev,
whom we shall discuss later. This aspect is evident already in the way his work is
set up. First, the parallelism, usually recognized in the literature, between the
dichotomy langue versus parole in Saussure and the dichotomy langue versus
discours in Benveniste should be reconsidered. Secondly, one can not overlook
Benveniste’s criticism of Saussure’s concept of ‘arbitrariness of the sign’.5 Finally,

it is above all the tendency of Benveniste to move in the direction of a study of the
complexity of the ‘text’ that marks the difference with an orthodox structuralist
position.
He strongly emphasizes that reducing language to the arrangement and solidarity
of its elements (regardless of whether the type of structuralism is French or
American) is a deep misunderstanding of the linguistic datum. This occurs because
«the linguistic “datum” is not, considered in this way, a primary datum with which
all one has to do is break it down into its component parts; it is actually a complex,
some of whose values come from particular qualities of the elements, others from
the conditions of their arrangement, still others from the objective situation».6
Benveniste refuses to reduce human communication to a theory of information
and the various languages to communication tools. Given that relationships with
others and with the world are the constitutive moments of speech, the structure of
utterances can only be that of dialogue. In this sense, dialogue consists of texts, and,
on the whole, is itself a text. At the same time, the analysis of the nature of the sign
and the reference requires constant attention to the extra-linguistic dimension of
language, which must necessarily correspond to a sort of “anthropological project”.
Benveniste’s concept of ‘culture’ renders indissoluble the act of communication
and the development of values constituting human groups and cultures.7 Having
renounced a reductive conception in which natural language is the result of the
combination of formal data, he, therefore, also rejected the reconstruction of lan-
guage on a causal basis, through the history of etymology, and instead gives full
importance to the meaning borne by language and everything that in it has his-
torically been deposited and is modified daily. Language, by reproducing
extra-linguistic reality, is the mirror of reality itself: inter-subjective relationships,
relationships with the world, the birth, transformation and maintenance of
institutions.8
The relationship with analytical logic that he identifies as a corollary of this
position is worth mentioning. Generally the concept of ‘discourse’ in Benveniste is
recognized as a precursor of the concept of ‘performative’. In Analytic Philosophy
and Language, Benveniste again makes the distinction between performative and
constative utterances. This distinction had been proposed by John Langshaw
Austin, a philosopher of language whom we will discuss later. Austin’s criticism
was made to mitigate their differences and is based on what in every constative
5
This point was specifically developed in Lepschy (1979).
6
The English version of Benveniste (1966) is Problems in General Linguistics (1973), p. 11. The
essay from which we quote is titled Recent Trends in General Linguistics.
7
From this concept was born Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, in which
Benveniste goes beyond traditional institutions of law, power and religion to investigate less
apparent forces that act upon techniques, ways of life, social relations, processes of speech and
thought.
8
Thinking of Benveniste, Dessons (1993) suggests the notion of language should be thought of
anthropologically, in terms of culture.
utterance is extralinguistic, which is not necessarily always clear. Although

Benveniste recognized the impossibility of reducing language to its merely formal
aspect, he nevertheless argued that this hypothesis could be plausible only if one
took account of the deep knowledge of the semantic aspects of a language. In
addition, if the major concern of analytical logic is to described how an utterance
serves to perform an action (so that formulating an utterance corresponds to per-
forming the action), Benveniste emphasizes the fact that an utterance is an indi-
vidual act of appropriation of the language. And as such, it is a constituent of the
subject. This is possible only because an utterance implies the presence of another
person and a reference to the reality proper to every speech.
In communicative interaction, in fact, for references to be possible, the sharing of
experience is necessary, which is expressed in the alternation of roles of “issuer”
and “receiver”, and in coherence, acquired during communication and based on the
assumption that the extra-linguistic reference is constant.9 For these reasons,
Benveniste appears to be the first scholar of structural linguistics to be highly
interested in the ‘text’ dimension as the ultimate level of linguistic analysis.
Outside of France, the teaching of Saussure was well received in Denmark by
Louis Trolle Hjelmslev. He published many works and is generally recognized as
the most orthodox exponent of structural linguistics of the twentieth century in
Europe. His first important book was Principes de grammaire générale (1928),
which forms the base of his whole conception; then he published La catégorie des
cas. Étude de grammaire générale (1935), which analyses in detail the general
category of grammatical case, providing a broad set of empirical data to support his
hypotheses. Hjelmslev’s work represents a constantly-evolving theory on the
problem of epistemology in linguistics.
In Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse (1943), translated in English as
Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1969), he criticized the prevailing methods
of the day in linguistics, proposing a model that was increasingly less descriptive
and more scientific. In his view, making linguistics scientific meant developing
Saussure’s ideas and extending them to their extreme consequences. In the
mid-Thirties he aimed for ever greater formalization and kept linguistics separate
from other sciences.
This attitude usually aroused two different reactions: in the first case, there was a
reaction in the form of rejection of the theoretical perspective, an explicit call to
distrust and resist any hybridization of the field; in the second case, which regarded
a minority, from an historiographical perspective, the secondary literature focused
on developing the point of view of the Danish linguist, trying to highlight the most
fertile aspects of his thinking, which, precisely because it was radical, made no
concessions to academic fashions and aimed directly at understanding the structure
of a system of signs.
According to Hjelmslev, a sign is a function of two forms, the “content-form”
and the “expression-form”, and this is the starting point of linguistic analysis.
9
Benveniste (1966), pp. 96–106. This essay is entitled The formal apparatus of enunciation.
However, each segnic function also originates from two substances: the substance
of content and the substance of expression. The substance of the content is the
psychological and conceptual manifestation of the sign. The substance of the
expression is the material substance in which a sign is manifested.
The attempt to use formal methods in linguistics is evident in his Résumé of a
Theory of Language (1975). It is the structure of the text that provides the first
indication of this attempt. On the one hand, the system seems blatantly
logical-mathematical. The book opens with the introduction of some undefined
terms and the exposition of five principles, which, like the five Euclidean postulates,
indicate the way forward by deduction (it is worth remembering that he was the son
of a geometry scholar). The Résumé seems to aspire to building a mechanism, a
super-algorithm that can determine whether a given object of communication is
semiotic or symbolic and whether it is language or not. Each term is formalized
with a corresponding symbol so that it can be inserted in calculation procedures. In
another area, however, things seem to progress in a different way. Hjelmslev, in
fact, believed that language is not a formal logical system and that linguistics is not
a field of research linked to logic; indeed, the latter must remain clearly distinct
from linguistics.
Hjelmslev’s objectives become clearer if we compare them with his epistemo-
logical goals. The Danish linguist had two objectives, which he had declared
already in the period of publication of Prolegomena: the first was to identify the
object linguistics was to study; the second was to obtain for the human sciences the
formal rigour typical of the exact sciences.10 When he began to talk about types of
dependence, Hjelmslev distinguished between two types of correlation (disjunctive
functions) that can exist between language units: in the first, exclusion, the corre-
lates (the two terms of the opposition) have no common variants; in the second,
participation, the correlates have common variants. The participations are correla-
tions, but correlations that are contradictory. He also identified the possibility that a
language may contain «extreme participations», in which «the participants have the
largest possible number of common variants» (Hjelmslev 1975, p. 62).
For Hjelmslev there are contradictory structures that are functional in languages:
already in La catégorie des cas. Étude de grammaire générale he had reiterated that
classical logic is only one of the possible realizations of a forma mentis, the human
10
The biggest problem is the kind of approach that he has in mind. At first glance, the first principle
set out in the Fundamentals and re-proposed in the Résumé appears almost obvious: «The
description must be free of contradictions, exhaustive and as simple as possible. The requirement
of absence of contradictions takes precedence over that of an exhaustive description. The
requirement of exhaustive description takes precedence over that of simplicity» (Hjelmslev 1975,
p. 45). The hierarchy between the different principles, however, is perplexing. Why, for example,
subordinate the completeness of the theory to its coherence? We must keep in mind that Hjelmslev
is explicit about coherence, which must be strong, that is, one must totally exclude contradictions
from the theory and not merely limit them, pending subsequent solutions.
mind, which is a “sub-logical system” in which the principle of non-contradiction is

not automatically present. So language is not a consistent object in all respects.11
As a result of this position, he was portrayed as a proponent of a scientific
method of analysis, almost a new form of semiotics, but, although later scholars
interpreted his position as that of a semiotic researcher (for example, this is the
opinion expressed by Algirdas Julien Greimas in his essay of 1966), it is plain that
Hjelmslev has argued that no sign can be interpreted unless it is contextualized (i.e.,
one cannot treat its functives—expression and content—as general connotative
mechanisms). For this reason, in his view, although the substance of the content is
important, the object of analysis is the form. Hjelmslev thus never modified the
linguist’s point of view: for him, meaning is given by the form of the content.
Outside of France, where Saussure disseminated his teachings, and Denmark,
where Hjelmslev studied and developed them further, the principles of structural
linguistics developed in other places, too, for example in the United States, and the
ideas circulating there around the 1930s were very similar to those in Europe.
Leonard Bloomfield, a contemporary of Hjelmslev and founder of structural
linguistics in America, was the author of Language (1933). This work was con-
sidered a landmark by American scholars in the 1940s and 1950s. As was the case
in Europe, the discipline did not consider the text as the level of analysis;
Bloomfield, in fact, considered the sentence as the natural subject of linguistic
research, and he defined it as «the largest unit with an inherent structure»
(Bloomfield 1933, p. 70), or «an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue
of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form» (Bloomfield 1933,
p. 170).
Bloomfield believed that language, understood as a complex social phenomenon,
should be studied by different disciplines and that, in the framework of these
different disciplines, linguistics should describe the structure of speech acts without
addressing the psychological and physiological conditions present in the use of
natural language. In addition, he also excluded the study of meaning from linguistic
science. This attitude of Bloomfield, in fact, isolated linguistics from disciplines
such as psychology, for which he had a kind of rejection; it also cut the study of
semantics out of linguistic research because the study of meaning had been
excluded as well. These studies, however, were made both by linguists and, even
more, by logicians, as we will see later.12
To sum up, he expressed a neopositivistic attitude, which was the basis for the
belief that «every statement must be verifiable by checking certain physical,
objectively measurable conditions, and scientific discourse must avoid referring to
any phenomenon (psychological, mental, etc.) that was not directly connected to
11
The Italian word uomo can refer to both the entire category (the genus homo) and a part thereof
(the human male); one can suppose that the word “thing” constitutes the lexical equivalent of
extreme participation because it is a term in which the largest possible number of common variants
is obtained.
12
On this aspect, see Fries (1975).
data that could be controlled by an outside observer» (my translation of Lepschy

1990, p. 447).
Bloomfield’s attitude is truly quite distant from the perspective of those who
argue that linguistics should have strong connections with the disciplines that deal
with human language and should attempt to integrate the research accomplished in
the various branches.13 The responsibility for having isolated, like watertight
compartments, the disciplines that study natural language can be traced back to
Bloomfield, and, since his work was influential for about twenty years, the
development of structural linguistics in the United States necessarily suffered the
consequences of this approach. To avoid any possible misunderstandings, however,
it should also be noted that Bloomfield’s attitude is much more scientific than that
of his European colleagues at that time, especially with regard to the adoption of a
rigorous terminology.
Generative Linguistics
In the United States, generative linguistics was the offspring of structural linguis-
tics. The main student of Bloomfield was Zellig Sabbetai Harris. Following the
footsteps of his teacher, he excluded the study of meaning from theoretical lin-
guistics; however, unlike Bloomfield, who ignored the contemporary research being
done on syntax and logical semantics, Harris took a position with respect to this
issue. On the basis of the position of Rudolf Carnap, expressed in The Logical
Syntax of language (1937),14 he argued that the interests of linguists were different
from those of logicians.15
Using simple formal tools, Harris pursued the analysis of natural language with
an obstinate empiricism, and in so doing went beyond the limits imposed on
linguistics: while considering the sentence as the largest unit of the domain of
grammar, he carried out his analyses on texts and therefore tested the limits of
methods of analysis and classification, and brought these limits to light in Methods
in Structural Linguistics (1951) and in Discourse Analysis (1952).
13
The attitude of contemporary scholars with respect to Bloomfield is exemplified in a particularly
illuminating way by the following words: «Today, these positions are generally discredited and it
is not clear how it was possible that, for nearly three decades, linguists seriously thought they
could say something interesting about language, and about psychological phenomena inextricably
relevant to it, on the basis of a model that one could hardly imagine more incongruous and
unsuitable to the object under study» (my translation of Lepschy 1990, p. 447).
14
The excessive pessimism of Carnap is easily seen, for example, in the following statement: «In
consequence of the unsystematic and logically imperfect structure of the natural word-languages
(such as German or Latin), the statement of their formal rules of formation and transformation
would be so complicated that it would hardly be feasible in practice» (Carnap 2001, p. 2).
15
See Harris (1963), p. 69.
The name of Harris is linked to the distributional method. It transcends the limits
of the sentence to «representing the order of successive occurrences of members of
a class» (Harris 1952, p. 8) within phrastic chains, i.e. texts. This method analysed
the distribution of morphemes by means of “equivalences”, which create «chains in
which the elements are the same or had the same environment» (de Beaugrande and
Dressler 1981, p. 17). To increase the number of equivalences and thus to make
analysis more exhaustive, Harris applied the notion of “transformation”. Thanks to
transformation he could manipulate expressions in order to obtain, transformation
after transformation, a “transform” with the maximum number of already realized
equivalences, beyond which it was no longer possible to obtain any new ones.
Since equivalences say nothing in terms of meaning, but manifest at most «what
criteria a new sentence must satisfy to be formally identical with the sentences of
the text» (Harris 1952, p. 493), it is unclear «what Harris’ method is supposed to
discover» (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, p. 17), and for this reason, perhaps, it
did not have much effect in the long run.16
All things considered, Harris can be attributed with two merits: first, to have
introduced the concept of transformation, which was then taken up and modified by
Chomsky; second, to have conducted research not only at the sentence level, but
also at the level of text. This research, however, did not consider the ‘text’ object
from a theoretical point of view, but only from a practical point of view. The
research did not address textuality theoretically, but was only empirically
motivated.
A pupil of Harris, Avram Noam Chomsky, attempted to solve all the problems
that did not find a sufficient explanation in the framework of the distributional
method. Chomsky’s contribution can claim the merit of having two fundamental
characteristics.
First, Chomsky overturned the perspective of the distributional approach: rather
than proceeding from hard data to the identification of the theoretical unit, he started
with theoretical formulations and sought confirmation or invalidation from the
empirical data; in other words, he transformed the inductive process of the distri-
butional method into a deductive procedure. The result was that Chomsky’s the-
ories could prove valid upon empirical verification; however, empirical verification
is subject to the data on which it is conducted. Chomsky no longer selected data
having a pre-established number of statements belonging to a text (which was the
typical corpus employed by the distributionalists), but rather the infinite number of
all possible statements of a natural language. In his opinion, this was the only way
to evidence the creativity of the speaker, that is, the ability to produce—and
understand—a potentially infinite number of sentences. This creativity is part of
competence, i.e. the system of (innate) principles that allows an adult human being
to be constantly able to build and receive new communications, in the sense that
they have never been spoken or heard before, to recognize spoken or perceived
sentences as acceptable or unacceptable, to interpret a sentence by eliminating the
16
See Prince (1978).
ambiguities that it contains and to operate transformations on a single sentence,

such as shifts from the active to the passive form and from the affirmative to the
negative (and vice versa).
Second, Chomsky transformed linguistics into the grammar of competence,
given that he took on the task of discovering and describing the system of com-
petence that exists in the mind of the speaker. He however omitted from the field of
his research its implementation, that is, the empirically observable variety of per-
formances in which the linguistic competence of a speaker is manifested.17
Working further down the path opened by his teacher, Chomsky considered the
use of formal methods in linguistics valid and then began to explain and describe
competence and linguistic concepts by means of formal tools of mathematics, logic
and (newly born, at that time) computer science: he decided to use the theory of
automata and the theory of recursive functions. With the introduction of these
methods in linguistics, Chomsky thought he could address the question of the
infinite number of expressions in a natural language, the absence of limits to the
length of an expression in a natural language, the distinction between grammatical
and non-grammatical utterances, as well as semantic and structural ambiguities. In
other words, he tried to overcome the problems which constituted the limits of the
distributional approach.
The grammatical theory of Chomsky does not deal with the creation of com-
petence, that is, it is not concerned with single performances that evidence the
linguistic behaviour of a speaker; his theory deals with predicting the generation18
of all possible utterances of a natural language, to which a structural description is
assigned.19
To transformational grammar, «many criticisms were addressed, above all that of
being too abstract, of referring to a non-existent ideal speaker-listener in a perfectly
homogeneous linguistic community, of ignoring real linguistic material, of under-
estimating the differences between actually attested languages, aiming at a universal
grammar whose structures end up being curiously similar to those of English» (my
translation of Lepschy 1990, p. 453); all these criticisms could be supported by
some very convincing arguments.
17
Chomsky’s concepts of performance and competence are often associated in the linguistic
literature with the concepts of parole and langue introduced by de Saussure, which are probably
more familiar to the reader. While it can be said that there is a certain correspondence between
performance and parole, the same cannot be affirmed for competence and langue. Chomsky’s
concept, in fact, concerns the system of mental rules inherent in speaking, while Saussure’s
concept regards the system of rules established by a socialized collective.
18
We must understand this «generation» as a mathematical concept; for example, given a linear
equation x = 3y, different values of x are obtained by assigning different values to y.
19
The structural description consists of a “deep structure”, which would be the abstract syntactical
organization. This is the basis of a sentence and is responsible for its semantic interpretation, that
is, the assignment of meaning. The name surface structure is given to the syntactic organization
evidenced by the sentence in relation to its linear manifestation.
With the publication of Syntactic Structures (1957),20 Chomsky introduced new

concepts to the field of linguistics, new terminology and a methodology that used
logical, mathematical and computer models in the formulation of linguistic theories.
His formal methods, considered as a means to make observations of natural lan-
guages in an explicit way controllable by others, were not accepted by all linguists,
but even so, they were used. We can therefore say that Chomsky, by putting
mathematical theories at the service of studies of syntax, indicated a new direction
for linguistic studies that can be called the “algebraic line” of research, oriented to
syntax.21
To better understand the methodological breakthrough of Chomsky, we should
remember that between the Fifties and Sixties the coveted goal of several linguists
was to reach one of these two conditions22: either to construct a linguistic theory in
a formal way, that is, in the language of mathematics or logic, or formulate it
20
In this exposition we will not refer to the proposals of Chomsky (1957) but to the more widely
disseminated version contained in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). In fact, the history of
generative grammar is now more than forty years old and, therefore, in a full exposition we should
take into account all the revisions of the theoretical framework, some of which are substantial,
though it has always remained focused on syntax. The theory of Generative Grammar has in fact
evolved from the so-called Standard Theory (in Chomsky 1968) to the following later versions:
Extended Standard Theory (in Chomsky 1972); Revised Extended Standard Theory (in Chomsky
1975); Government and Binding Theory (in Chomsky 1981); Minimalist Program (in Chomsky
1993).
21
The dichotomy between the algebraic approach and the logical approach regards the use of
formal methods in linguistic research. «Formal methods used in today’s linguistics rest upon two
lines of research. The first line goes back to such workers as Frege, Carnap, Reichenbach,
Ajdukiewicz and others in the field of philosophy of language. We want to call it the logical line as
opposed to the algebraic line, initiated by the works of Chomsky and others in formal language
theory. These two lines differ greatly as to their orientation on syntax or semantics. The logical line
can justly be called semantically oriented, the algebraic line syntactically oriented. We want to
point but that the notions of ‘syntax’ and of ‘semantics’ refer to formal syntax and semantics in
artificial systems. The algebraic line in formal language theory is not to be confused with gen-
erative grammar in the line of Chomsky. Generative grammar in this form makes use of algebraic
language systems partly studied by Chomsky himself» (Eikmeyer 1980, p. 2).
22
If we choose to borrow the words of Andrea Bonomi, we must recognize that «it is certainly no
coincidence that the use of formal logical instruments found a first, natural field of application in
the area of syntax, that is, the most “abstract” of the fields of research according to the boundaries
of Carnap, in the sense that among the data which it is supposed to account for there are no
elements that require an extra-linguistic reference (as in semantics), nor those of a contextual
nature (as in pragmatics). If this conceptual paradigm, which sees in syntax the culmination of a
gradual theoretical selection (and impoverishment) of the data to be analysed, is correct, then it is
not difficult to explain why, symmetrically, syntax was the historic starting point of the systematic
use in linguistic of methodologies developed within the logic of contemporary mathematics» (my
translation of Bonomi 1983, pp. 148–149).
explicitly, that is, in a regulated language that uses specific terms in the most precise
way possible. Both types of formulation would have allowed a linguistic theory to
be automated, that is, rendered applicable on a computer.23
Thus the influence of research on artificial intelligence, which in those years was
the centre of scientific debate in America, drove Chomsky to focus on the for-
mulation of a formal linguistic theory, the theory that currently makes him the most
celebrated linguist of the second half of the twentieth century.
Two limits, however, are attributed to Chomsky: first, he anchored, perhaps
more than before, linguistic research to the sentence, that is, he neglected some of
the stimuli known to Harris, which could have been taken further into account.
Indeed Harris, while following an essentially structural method, devoted himself
constantly to the analysis of texts, and not sentences, in the application of his
models. These stimuli, as we shall discuss in depth below, can be considered
historical precedents of the genesis of text linguistics. Secondly, though he con-
sidered the study of meaning, he artificially discriminated between logical
semantics and linguistic semantics (of which the apparatus developed by Katz and
Fodor is a clear manifestation);24 in this way he confined semantics to an inter-
pretative dimension.
From the point of view of research on the text, both structural and generative
linguistics are, essentially, two aspects of the same type of study, i.e. linguistics
aimed at the study of the sentence.
23
From a technical point of view, it was hypothesized that a linguistic theory formulated in the
language of mathematics or logics could be automatized in order to be run on a computer. If the
formal system had the complexity of at most a Turing machine, it could be automatized by suitable
algorithms. Yet though these algorithms may be suitable for processing the system from a theo-
retical point of view, they are not necessarily effective relative to a given computer installation.
Indeed the implemented algorithm may prove too complex and take too much place and time, and
therefore would not be justifiable. If complete automation was impossible, an attempt at partial
automation would have to be made in a sort of man-machine cooperation, similar to the model
developed in the field of HCI (= Human-Computer Interaction), see Eikmeyer (1980), pp. 5–6.
24
To illustrate the functioning of Katz and Fodor’ apparatus, we present the semantic represen-
tation of the English noun ‘chase’ (a hunt), taken from Katz (1967, p. 169): (((Activity of X)
(Nature:(Physical)) ((Motion)
(Rate:(Fast)) (Character:(Following Y))

(Intention:(Trying to catch ((Y) (Motion))).
The incoming lexeme (called lexical entry) is provided by a syntactic indicator, one or more
semantic indicators, one or more differentiators and one or more selective restrictions. In this way,
each lexical entry is composed of a series of elements that allow different combinations and form
the so-called componential tree. Going through the entire componential tree, i.e. choosing between
alternative routes, one arrives at the end of the path and thus at a certain reading.
The Text from a Logical Point of View: the Linguistic Turn 15
The Text from a Logical Point of View:

the Linguistic Turn25
European and American linguists saw no relationship between their semantics and
logical semantics until the mid-Sixties. They moved only in the path traced by
tradition, following Saussure and Hjelmslev, who denied there were contacts
between linguistics and “psychological sciences”; and following Bloomfield, who
ignored the investigations into syntax and logical semantics going on around him;
and following Harris, who had argued that there was a distinction to be made
between the fields of linguistic and logic. However, some changes began to occur:
although the distributional approach of Harris did not have lasting consequences,
one publication did dare to defy its primacy in the years in which it was dominant.
Reichenbach published a manual titled Elements of Symbolic Logic (1948),
which contained a chapter on the analysis of conversational language.26 Reversing
the position of Rudolph Carnap (perhaps overly pessimistic?),27 the logician
severely criticized the grammatical tradition for the way in which expressions of
natural language are ascribed to grammatical categories. He saw the points of
contact between grammatical tradition and the logical systems employed by Frege
and Pierce. These systems had fuelled a misconception of the logical structure of
natural language. Therefore, he made proposals concerning the description of
deictic expressions, adjectives, adverbs, tenses and modes.
With generative grammar, formal methods were established in linguistics, first
through syntax and then through semantics. At first, as we said, it was a mathe-
matical type of formalism, and for this reason it has been defined an algebraic
approach; then, in correspondence to the growing orientation towards semantic
problems, the formalism employed began to be taken from different types of logic.
The formulation of a model for semantics brought intense criticism down on
Katz and Fodor, both from the side of logicians and from that of linguists.28
Linguists criticized the semantics of Katz and Fodor especially for the assumptions
on which the analysis is based, namely the fact that the meaning of an expression
25
The present section is an extended version of Giuffrè (2011b), pp. 11–14.
26
For a general overview of Reichenbach, see McMahon (1976).
27
The statement to which Reichenbach refers is contained in Carnap (2001), p. 2 (see note 14).
28
The best known locus vexatus of Katz and Fodor is the following: «Since a complete theory of
setting selection must represent as part of an utterance any and every feature of the world which
speakers need in order to determine the preferred reading of that utterance, and since, as we have
just seen, practically any item of information about the world is essential to some disambiguation,
two conclusions follow. First, such a theory cannot in principle distinguish between the speaker’s
knowledge of his language and his knowledge of the world, because, according to such a theory,
part of characterization of a linguistic ability is representation of virtually all knowledge of the
world that speakers share, and since a theory of the kind we have been discussing requires such a
systematization, it is ipso facto not a serious model for semantics» (Katz and Fodor 1963, p. 179).
This step testifies to an undue restriction of the concept of competence that makes the whole
system too rigid.
can be broken down into basic elements and can be represented by the association
of the parts. If this so-called componential analysis could prove valid for individual
lexemes, it did not give adequate guarantee of validity for phrases, and still less for
sentences; that is to say, in general, for the meaning assigned to the lexical input.29
Among logicians, however, the most rigorous critic was Yehoshua Bar-Hillel,
who accused Katz and Fodor of identifying semantics with lexicology on the
grounds that they had neglected all the elements of logical semantics.30 He argued
that, as part of their semantics, relations such as ‘implication’ could not be derived
and that it was impossible to reconstruct semantic fields, while he reiterated that the
task of linguistic semantics was to arrive at a definition of ‘derivability’.31
The strength of Bar-Hillel’s criticism of Katz and Fodor and the gradual increase
in logical research into syntax, aided by the fact that Chomsky himself had
employed this route, meant that within the Chomsky school, scholars began moving
29
The distinction between ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’, quite common in logic-oriented linguistics, is
homologous to that between ‘intension’ and ‘extension’. The distinction dates back to Carnap. The
explanation—taken from (Lyons 1977, p. 171)—is that «the intension of a term is the set of
essential properties that determine the applicability of the term» while «with the extension of a
term is meant the class of things to which it is applied». So the first term refers to specific content,
to its individual properties, the qualities necessarily possessed by the term to be defined
(definiendum); the second to all objects denoted by the same sign. It follows that the extension of a
lexeme is the set of individuals to which the lexeme can be referred as an attribute and that the
extension of a proposition is the set of cases in which it is true. So it is clear that «to give the sense
of a language expression Eo in the natural language being described, i.e. the object language, is to
translate it into a language expression Em in the metalanguage—the language of the semantic
representation, which may be the same as the object language; thus dog means ‘canine quad-
ruped’» (Allan 1992, p. 395) and it should not be forgotten that «a dictionary gives the decon-
textualized sense of a word, abstracted from innumerable usages of it. Dictionary users must
puzzle out its denotation, i.e. what a speaker or writer uses the word to mean in the world evoked
by a text in which the word appears» (Allan 1992, p. 394).
30
Echoing the position inaugurated by Bar-Hillel, Bonomi and Usberti used this criticism in Italy.
Both note that Katz and Fodor, by rejecting extra-linguistic knowledge, dissolve the relationship
between sense and denotation in a relationship between signs, thus proving to be more lexicog-
raphers than semanticists; they argue that «to the extent that one wants to effectively build a
semantic theory, one is […] forced to make assumptions, though implied and inadequate ones,
about what the meaning of the words is» (my translation of Bonomi and Usberti 1971, p. 99) and
therefore, in direct opposition to Katz and Fodor, they believe it is possible «to assign sets of
appropriate traits to lexical items only to the extent that we use these traits as words of the
language. So not only does the meta-language fail to give us an explanation of what the meaning
is, but the “meta-linguistic competence” that we could invoke [viz. invoked by Katz and Fodor]
turns out to be precisely linguistic competence» (my translation of Bonomi and Usberti 1971,
p. 103). As regards meta-language, both explained that «if the explanation of the lexical meaning
of a word occurs by means of other words, a circular process of interdefinition begins whereby, in
order to define the meaning of a term, you use terms that must themselves be defined. In the best
case one produces a chain of definitions resulting from synonymy, which, after going through the
entire dictionary, take you back to square one, still undefined» (my translation of Bonomi and
Usberti 1971, p. 103).
31
See Bar-Hillel (1970).
away from the “orthodox” position. Thus, a current opposed to the semantic
interpretation of Katz and Fodor arose within generative grammar, and it was called
generative semantics.
Generative Semantics
These scholars objected that the theory did not take semantics and problems related
to it into due consideration and they began to extend the domain of linguistics,
arguing that grammar should concern itself not only with the generation of gram-
matical sentences, but also with the structuring of semantic representations. The
post-Chomskyan scholars were gradually attracted to reflections on meta-language
because, due to the opposition that had arisen against interpretative semantics, in
the late Sixties semantics had become the field of study of natural language where
linguists and logicians would most often clash.
The generative semanticists, who had substantially incorporated the views of
Bar-Hillel in their research, became the natural ally of logicians and philosophers of
language against Chomskyan orthodoxy;32 generative semantics was the crowbar
with which to open linguistics to formal methods once and for all. Indeed the
convergence between the interests of logicians and those of generative semanticists
caused the algebraic approach that had characterized Chomsky, Katz and Fodor to
regress, and the strengthening of the logical approach in linguistic research.
The central question of semantics, which is a typical frontier discipline and
closely related to logic and semiotics, concerns semantic representations. For
scholars, semantic representations constituted (and still constitute) a continuous
battlefield, because they are built through the use of a metalanguage.33
The continuous discussion about the kind of metalanguage to be used in
semantic representations brought linguistics to proceed in the direction of logic and
the philosophy of language. Since the days of Aristotle, logic has been used in the
representation of meaning. Standard logic is able to define truth conditions only in
propositions connected by particular uses of and, or and if/then, while non-standard
logic operates with postulates of meaning;34 but a valid metalanguage for the
32
Among the philosophers of language that maintained close relations with the generative
semanticists, Maxwell John Cresswell stands out. He frequently manifested his intention to further
his studies of the proposals of generative semantics; it could also be argued with some degree of
support that philosophers like Donald Davidson and David Kellogg Lewis filled the gap between
linguistics and logic, stabilizing contacts between the two disciplines.
33
On meta-language or metalanguage, the necessary reference is Lyons (1977), pp. 5–13.
34
From the logical point of view, providing truth conditions is a way of saying what the propo-
sitions mean. The concept can be clarified by saying that «[…] it seems uncontroversial that if a
sentence α is true and another β is false, then α and β do not mean the same. Truth-conditional
semantics assumes that, in essence, the meaning of a sentence is equivalent to the conditions under
which that sentence is true. The task then is to formulate an adequate and precise account of truth
semantics of natural languages must be at least as comprehensible as a natural

language and of the same class of notation.35 No logical language currently
achieves this goal; however, for a complete formalization of natural languages, this
is the goal to aim for.
The generative semanticists argued that semantics (and not syntax) generated the
deep structure of sentences. Among them we should give particular mention to
James McCawley and George Lakoff. Both were confronted with the problems
described above and tried to overcome the difficulties of Katz and Fodor’s model by
proposing a form of semantics that went outside the domain of meaning and
included the domain of extension as well.
The first argued that, like meta-language for semantic representations, it was
necessary to choose a language of symbolic logic and change it based on linguistic
motivations36; the second, however, went even further and evidenced the need to go
beyond the context of intension, using research on semantics conducted in the field
of modal logic. He proposed that sentences received truth conditions through a
formalism that was more elaborate than that of symbolic logic.37
Apart from the individual points of view and the various technical aspects, both
scholars occupy an important place the present work because they made several
attempts to employ logical systems, especially in regard to compositional rules, to
explain phenomena of natural language. Generative semantics was a healthy off-
spring of generative grammar, but it proved matricidal: it maintains that an inte-
grated system of several logical languages can serve as a language to a linguistic
theory.
Perhaps generative semantics is blamed for the defect of not sufficiently dis-
tinguishing, in semantic representations, between the rules of formation and the
rules of transformation, and not assigning correlates to semantic representations;
that is to say, the generative semanticists are not able to say what kind of entities
meanings are and how the meaning of an expression in natural language depends on
the meaning of its components.38
One might observe that «it is well known that many linguists have viewed with
particular suspicion the notion of logical form, as it is seen as unrelated to the syntax
and semantics of natural languages, and because through it, an additional level of
linguistic representation would be introduced, one with no independent motive to
exist and thus not required. One could even say that, in a certain sense, the rejection
of this notion has often been the mainstay of various arguments that question the
legitimacy of the application of certain logical tools in linguistic inquiry» (my
(Footnote 34 continued)
conditions in a way which makes it plausible to suppose that knowing the meaning of a sentence is
knowing its truth conditions» (Cresswell 1992, p. 404).
35
See McCawley (1981).
36
See McCawley (1972).
37
See Lakoff (1970).
38
See Hall-Partee (1976).
translation of Bonomi 1983, p. 150), but the real question to ask is: «can we avoid
representing somewhere (in the syntax, the semantics or independently) that type of
information that logicians and philosophers have traditionally linked to the (often
vague) concept of logical form? An affirmative answer to this question would mean
that linguists must cease trying to account for an essential aspect of the competence
of a speaker, that is, the ability to link different sets of logical consequences to the
grammatical structure, or, to say it more precisely, to assign different truth conditions
to the same sentence» (my translation of Bonomi 1983, p. 150).
Therefore, the inability to respond affirmatively to the above question obliged
logicians and linguistic experts to converge in search of a solution. This conver-
gence, however, raised a fundamental problem: because each logical system studies
only a limited section of the expressions of natural language (propositional logic
studies connectives, predicate logic studies quantification, modal logic studies
phrasal modifiers, etc.) the need arose, in order to formulate a linguistic theory, for a
comprehensive framework that could combine the individual fragmented and
specialized logical systems into a single logical system that was uniform and
general enough to describe all the constructions that occur simultaneously in the
texts of a natural language.
Two consequences ensued: first, the most extensive level of analysis of linguistic
research was no longer the sentence, but the text. It would serve as a testing ground
for an empirical verification of the integrated theoretical framework formulated—it
was on this path, therefore, that linguistics pressed for the creation of text lin-
guistics. Second, a degree of explicitness and an ability to integrate the studies of
different areas was achieved that had been never been seen previously.
Model-Theoretic Semantics
Logicians tried to build a semantic system of natural languages based on extension.

Richard Montague took up the challenge launched by Reichenbach and proposed
an alternative vision: he considered it appropriate to employ logical and mathe-
matical methods to develop a system of syntax and semantics useful to the study of
natural languages, so his objections to Chomsky were similar to those raised by
generative semanticists, but he possessed greater argumentative rigour and firmly
stressed the need for a coplanar development of syntax and semantics.39
Following the evolution of thought in the entire tradition of analytical logic of
language, linked to the names of Frege, Ajdukiewicz, Tarski, Carnap, Quine,
Kripke and Lewis, he argued that natural language expressions could not be
translated into corresponding logical forms by traditional logic. It intuitively made
39
The theory of Montague is presented in Stegmüller (1975), pp. 35–64, where much attention is
paid to philosophical and epistemological aspects. Further introductions in Dowty (1979) and
Dowty et al. (1981). More general is Chierchia (1992).
too many transformations when it tried to overcome the problems that arose when
the boundaries of individual logical systems were crossed. For this reason he
conceived of an ambitious project to construct a consistent logical system, one that
was sufficiently general, and which, as we mentioned before, could treat all
expressions of natural language. He called that project natural logic.
Montague’s theory seems extremely complicated: first, he refused to subject the
expressions of natural language to the intuitive changes of analytical logic, and to
vary only the procedure for applying the intuitive changes (because it would have
meant describing them through an already existing logical apparatus!); second, he
refused to modify the logical tools at its disposal to avoid the risk of rendering them
less accurate.40
Despite the high degree of complexity, the theory and work of Montague rep-
resented a first attempt to deal in an integrated way with syntax and semantics by
adopting formal methods, and gave impetus to the research of the philosophy of
language and the development and foundation of philosophical logic. In addition,
the activities of Montague marked the definitive prevalence of the logical approach
in linguistic research: logic was victorious over mathematics in the controversy over
which methodology to use in the formalization of linguistics. This meant the
prevalence of logic over algebra. Natural logic contains in nuce the determination
that expressions of natural language are to be treated on a level higher than that of
the sentence; it is an attempt to build a logical apparatus capable of regimenting
texts, rather than statements. It therefore represents a decisive step towards the
genesis of text linguistics.
The stage of development of the formal tools did not immediately allow a valid
linguistic theory to be proposed for statements; in fact, the semantic systems studied
by Montague, although they were subsequently revised, expanded and deepened,41
did not provide sufficient explanations of linguistic meaning.42
These studies should be given the merit of having decreed that the way to solve
the semantic problems is to combine different types of logical systems and to give
primary importance to model-theoretic semantics. Model-theoretic semantics
comprises three parts. First comes a syntactic description of the linguistic items-words,
phrases, sentences, etc. of the language in question; this is without reference to meaning.
Second comes a description of a class of (usually abstract) language-independent entities
40
The reasoning is flawed by the prejudice that historical languages are imperfect and the tools of
logic are eternal creations of the human mind. This assumption is shared by many logicians,
including Montague. On this subject see Bonomi (1973). Other scholars such as Eric Havelock and
Walter Ong, the theorists of so-called “Greek Orality and Literacy”, propose another point of view:
Havelock challenges analytic philosophers’ assumption that logical procedures have always been
rooted in human nature; Ong affirms that the illusion that logic is a closed system possessing
perfect coherence has been encouraged by the written word and even more by the press (see La
Matina 1994, pp. 99–143).
41
Cresswell was interested in continuing the work of Montague in Cresswell (1973). For the
development of natural logic in the context of generative grammar, see Hall-Partee (1976).
42
See Suppes (1973).
which are the meanings of expressions in different categories. Finally comes a function
which assigns a meaning to each linguistic item in such a way that whole sentences will be
correlated with entities which adequately represent their meaning in the language being
described. The most common such theories are those developed within the possible world
semantics […]. A possible world is a complete and total way that the world could be. One
of these possible worlds is the actual world: this is the way things are. In possible-worlds
semantics, the truth conditions of a sentence are the ways the world has to be if the sentence
is true, and so the assignment function must end up by giving to each sentence, at each
contextual index, a class of possible worlds. The meaning of a sentence is in one sense
conventional, but in another not. The meanings of the separate words are conventional; but
once given, they determine, in conjunction with the syntax of the sentence, the meanings of
complex items. The most explicit treatments of natural language in a possible-worlds
framework are those inspired by the work of Montague […] (Cresswell 1992, p. 404).
Therefore, the solution to the most important problems of semantics might be

found thanks to the possible-worlds theory. This is also what Keith Allan suggests:
truth-conditional and model-theoretic semantics, developed by Montague and by Cresswell,
exploit the notion of ‘possible worlds’ to distinguish sense from denotation, and have rules
for assigning denotations (extensions) to senses (intentions). They seem to offer the best
hope for representing the semantic effect of one surface-syntactic category upon another in
the same structure. Such systems may one day offer a satisfactory semantic metalanguage
for natural language (Allan 1992, p. 397).
Thus, formalization took hold of linguistics, first in the studies of syntax and
then in those of semantics. When these theoretical methods became known in
Europe, where conditions were favourable to the birth of text linguistics, linguistics
came to a turning point, the so-called linguistic turn.
We can define as a turn the path that began with the rejection of formal methods
and which subsequently led to their use in linguistics, first in a prevalently algebraic
approach (Harris and Chomsky) and then in a logical approach (generative
semantics and Montague). Moreover, linguistics, which was initially isolated from
the neighbouring disciplines as if they were watertight compartments, has pro-
gressively extended its domain to stably include semantics, a discipline in continual
contact with logic, the philosophy of language and semiotics.
Text linguistics, because it became a separate discipline in Europe only after the
gradual formalization that sentence-based linguistics underwent in the twentieth
century in the United States, cultivated the aspiration of reaching the formal rigour
typical of disciplines such as mathematics, logic and computer science.
The Text in Text Linguistics43
Text linguistics was born as an independent discipline using the coincidence of two
factors: the impact of the dispute between interpretative semantics and generative
semantics on European scholars, and the development of studies on texts
43
This section is an extended version of Giuffrè (2011b), pp. 15–17.
(especially literary texts) in the context of structuralism and semiotics. As we

anticipated in the title of this chapter by using the title of a work by Peter Hartmann,
from a post-eventum perspective it would indeed seem that alle Wege führen zum
Text.
A homeland and a precise date of birth can be attributed to the genesis of text
linguistics. It was born in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German
Democratic Republic by way of three fundamental publications in the mid-Sixties:
Text, Texte, Klassen von Texten (1964) by Peter Hartmann, Tempus. Besprochene
und erzählte Welt (1964) by Harald Weinrich and Review of Z. S. Harris’ Discourse
Analysis Reprints (1965) by Manfred Bierwisch.
Peter Hartmann, as a theorist, dealt in terms of general methodology with the
need to establish a level of linguistic analysis that was higher than that of the
sentence, arguing that language does not exist and that it cannot be analysed unless
it is in the form of a ‘text’. Harald Weinrich oriented his studies to the concept of
‘text’ in such an explicit way that the subtitle, in Italian, was translated Le funzioni
dei tempi nel testo (The functions of tenses in the text). Harald Weinrich’s work
analysed a very rich corpus of narrative texts and proposed new categories suitable
for stylistic and literary studies. His work also outlined the possibility of defining
literary genres on the basis of a verbal typology. Manfred Bierwisch, in his review
of Harris, showed that an entirely implausible text can satisfy the equivalence
criteria of Harris and consequently he became interested, and was among the first,
in the problem of coherence (his criticisms of Katz and Fodor’s semantics are also
interesting). He sought a solution to this problem by attempting to define the
concept of a ‘text in L’; he maintained that, just as a theory of the sentence has the
task of defining a sentence, a textual theory must provide a definition of text.
The publication of these three works testifies to the fruitful interaction of
methods derived from research in the United States and currents of thought in
Europe. But the theoretical reflection on the text in Europe had been strong even
before these three studies of the mid-Sixties. For example, both of the following
authors could be considered precursors of text linguistics: Tudor Vianu, author of
Arta prozatorilor români (1941) and Eugeniu Coșeriu, author of Determinación y
entorno. Dos problemas de una lingüística del hablar (1955–1956).44
The first was lacking in a rigorous use of scientific terminology; the second
started from a general reflection on language and detected three levels in the
manifestation of the faculty of language: a universal level of speaking, a historical
level of individual natural languages and the individual level of the text. In con-
nection with these levels, there are three different types of linguistics: of speech, of
the language and of the text. The essay deals mainly with the linguistics of speech
(“del hablar”), which was supposed to solve the remaining problems of linguistics
of language (both structural linguistics and, on a lower level, generative). The
perspective of Coșeriu, however, is quite peculiar.
44
See Dragos (1986), p. 180.
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United States (which, after the expiration of its national charter, had
become a State corporation chartered by the Legislature of
Pennsylvania in January, 1836) for the purpose of restoring
themselves to power. The whole proceeding became clear to those
who could see nothing while it was in progress. Even those of the
democratic party whose votes had helped to do the mischief, could
now see that the attempt to deposit forty millions with the States was
destruction to the deposit banks; that the repeal of President
Jackson’s order, known as the “specie circular”—requiring payment
for public lands to be in coin—was to fill the treasury with paper
money, to be found useless when wanted; that distress was purposely
created to throw blame of it upon the party in power; that the
promptitude with which the Bank of the United States had been
brought forward as a remedy for the distress, showed that it had
been held in reserve for that purpose; and the delight with which the
whig party saluted the general calamity, showed that they considered
it their own passport to power. Financial embarrassment and general
stagnation of business diminished the current receipts from lands
and customs, and actually caused an absolute deficit in the public
treasury. In consequence, the President found it an inexorable
necessity to issue his proclamation convening Congress in extra
session.
The first session of the twenty-fifth Congress met in extra session,
at the call of the President, on the first Monday of September, 1837.
The message was a review of the events and causes which had
brought about the panic; a defense of the policy of the “specie
circular,” and a recommendation to break off all connection with any
bank of issue in any form; looking to the establishment of an
Independent Treasury, and that the Government provide for the
deficit in the treasury by the issue of treasury notes and by
withholding the deposit due to the States under the act then in force.
The message and its recommendations were violently assailed both
in the Senate and House by able and effective speakers, notably by
Messrs. Clay and Webster, and also by Mr. Caleb Cushing, of
Massachusetts, who made a formal and elaborate reply to the whole
document under thirty-two distinct heads, and reciting therein all
the points of accusation against the democratic policy from the
beginning of the government down to that day. The result was that
the measures proposed by the Executive were in substance enacted;
and their passage marks an era in our financial history—making a
total and complete separation of Bank and State, and firmly
establishing the principle that the government revenues should be
receivable in coin only.
The measures of consequence discussed and adopted at this
session, were the graduation of price of public lands under the pre-
emption system, which was adopted; the bill to create an
independent Treasury, which passed the Senate, but failed in the
House; and the question of the re-charter of the district banks, the
proportion for reserve, and the establishment of such institutions on
a specie basis. The slavery question was again agitated in
consequence of petitions from citizens and societies in the Northern
States, and a memorial from the General Assembly of Vermont,
praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and
territories, and for the exclusion of future slave states from the
Union. These petitions and memorials were disposed of adversely;
and Mr. Calhoun, representing the ultra-Southern interest, in several
able speeches, approved of the Missouri compromise, he urged and
obtained of the Senate several resolutions declaring that the federal
government had no power to interfere with slavery in the States; and
that it would be inexpedient and impolitic to interfere, abolish or
control it in the District of Columbia and the territories. These
movements for and against slavery in the session of 1837–38 deserve
to be noticed, as of disturbing effect at the time, and as having
acquired new importance from subsequent events.
The first session of the twenty-sixth Congress opened December,
1839. The organization of the House was delayed by a closely and
earnestly contested election from the State of New Jersey. Five
Democrats claiming seats as against an equal number of Whigs.
Neither set was admitted until after the election of Speaker, which
resulted in the choice of Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, the Whig
candidate, who was elected by the full Whig vote with the aid of a few
democrats—friends of Mr. Calhoun, who had for several previous
sessions been acting with the Whigs on several occasions. The House
excluding the five contested seats from New Jersey, was really
Democratic; having 122 members, and the Whigs 113 members. The
contest for the Speakership was long and arduous, neither party
adhering to its original caucus candidate. Twenty scattering votes,
eleven of whom were classed as Whigs, and nine as Democrats,
prevented a choice on the earlier ballots, and it was really Mr.
Calhoun’s Democratic friends uniting with a solid Whig vote on the
final ballot that gained that party the election. The issue involved was
a vital party question as involving the organization of the House. The
chief measure, of public importance, adopted at this session of
Congress was an act to provide for the collection, safe-keeping, and
disbursing of the public money. It practically revolutionized the
system previously in force, and was a complete and effectual
separation of the federal treasury and the Government, from the
banks and moneyed corporations of the States. It was violently
opposed by the Whig members, led by Mr. Clay, and supported by
Mr. Cushing, but was finally passed in both Houses by a close vote.
At this time, and in the House of Representatives, was exhibited
for the first time in the history of Congress, the present practice of
members “pairing off,” as it is called; that is to say, two members of
opposite political parties, or of opposite views on any particular
subject, agreeing to absent themselves from the duties of the House,
for the time being. The practice was condemned on the floor of the
House by Mr. John Quincy Adams, who introduced a resolution:
“That the practice, first openly avowed at the present session of
Congress, of pairing off, involves, on the part of the members
resorting to it, the violation of the Constitution of the United States,
of an express rule of this House, and of the duties of both parties in
the transaction, to their immediate constituents, to this House, and
to their country.” This resolution was placed in the calendar to take
its turn, but not being reached during the session, was not voted on.
That was the first instance of this justly condemned practice, fifty
years after the establishment of the Government; but since then it
has become common, even inveterate, and is now carried to great
lengths.
The last session of the twenty-sixth Congress was barren of
measures, and necessarily so, as being the last of our administration
superseded by the popular voice, and soon to expire; and therefore
restricted by a sense of propriety, during the brief remainder of its
existence, to the details of business and the routine of service. The
cause of this was the result of the presidential election of 1840. The
same candidates who fought the battle of 1836 were again in the
field. Mr. Van Buren was the Democratic candidate. His
administration had been satisfactory to his party, and his
nomination for a second term was commended by the party in the
different States in appointing their delegates; so that the proceedings
of the convention which nominated him were entirely harmonious
and formal in their nature. Mr. Richard M. Johnson, the actual Vice-
President, was also nominated for Vice-President.
On the Whig ticket, General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, was
the candidate for President, and Mr. John Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice-
President. The leading statesmen of the Whig party were again put
aside, to make way for a military man, prompted by the example in
the nomination of General Jackson, the men who managed
presidential elections believing then as now that military renown was
a passport to popularity and rendered a candidate more sure of
election. Availability—for the purpose—was the only ability asked for.
Mr. Clay, the most prominent Whig in the country, and the
acknowledged head of the party, was not deemed available; and
though Mr. Clay was a candidate before the convention, the
proceedings were so regulated that his nomination was referred to a
committee, ingeniously devised and directed for the afterwards
avowed purpose of preventing his nomination and securing that of
General Harrison; and of producing the intended result without
showing the design, and without leaving a trace behind to show what
was done. The scheme (a modification of which has since been
applied to subsequent national conventions, and out of which many
bitter dissensions have again and again arisen) is embodied and was
executed in and by means of the following resolution adopted by the
convention: “Ordered, That the delegates from each State be
requested to assemble as a delegation, and appoint a committee, not
exceeding three in number, to receive the views and opinions of such
delegation, and communicate the same to the assembled committees
of all the delegations, to be by them respectively reported to their
principals; and that thereupon the delegates from each State be
requested to assemble as a delegation, and ballot for candidates for
the offices of President and Vice-President, and having done so, to
commit the ballot designating the votes of each candidate, and by
whom given, to its committee, and thereupon all the committees
shall assemble and compare the several ballots, and report the result
of the same to their several delegations, together with such facts as
may bear upon the nomination; and said delegation shall forthwith
reassemble and ballot again for candidates for the above offices, and
again commit the result to the above committees, and if it shall
appear that a majority of the ballots are for any one man for
candidate for President, said committee shall report the result to the
convention for its consideration; but if there shall be no such
majority, then the delegation shall repeat the balloting until such a
majority shall be obtained, and then report the same to the
convention for its consideration. That the vote of a majority of each
delegation shall be reported as the vote of that State; and each State
represented here shall vote its full electoral vote by such delegation
in the committee.” This was a sum in political algebra, whose
quotient was known, but the quantity unknown except to those who
planned it; and the result was—for General Scott, 16 votes; for Mr.
Clay, 90 votes; for General Harrison, 148 votes. And as the law of the
convention impliedly requires the absorption of all minorities, the
106 votes were swallowed up by the 148 votes and made to count for
General Harrison, presenting him as the unanimity candidate of the
convention, and the defeated candidates and all their friends bound
to join in his support. And in this way the election of 1840 was
effected—a process certainly not within the purview of those framers
of the constitution who supposed they were giving to the nation the
choice of its own chief magistrate.
The contest before the people was a long and bitter one, the
severest ever known in the country, up to that time, and scarcely
equalled since. The whole Whig party and the large league of
suspended banks, headed by the Bank of the United States making
its last struggle for a new national charter in the effort to elect a
President friendly to it, were arrayed against the Democrats, whose
hard-money policy and independent treasury schemes, met with
little favor in the then depressed condition of the country. Meetings
were held in every State, county and town; the people thoroughly
aroused; and every argument made in favor of the respective
candidates and parties, which could possibly have any effect upon
the voters. The canvass was a thorough one, and the election was
carried for the Whig candidates, who received 234 electoral votes
coming from 19 States. The remaining 60 electoral votes of the other
9 States, were given to the Democratic candidate; though the popular
vote was not so unevenly divided; the actual figures being 1,275,611
for the Whig ticket, against 1,135,761 for the Democratic ticket. It was
a complete rout of the Democratic party, but without the moral effect
of victory.
On March 4, 1841, was inaugurated as President, Gen’l Wm. H.
Harrison, the first Chief Magistrate elected by the Whig party, and
the first President who was not a Democrat, since the installation of
Gen’l Jackson, March 4, 1829. His term was a short one. He issued a
call for a special session of Congress to convene the 31st of May
following, to consider the condition of the revenue and finances of
the country, but did not live to meet it. Taken ill with a fatal malady
during the last days of March, he died on the 4th of April following,
having been in office just one month. He was succeeded by the Vice-
President, John Tyler. Then, for the first time in our history as a
government, the person elected to the Vice-Presidency of the United
States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the
constitution, had devolved upon him the Presidential office.
The twenty-seventh Congress opened in extra session at the call of
the late President, May 31, 1841. A Whig member—Mr. White of
Kentucky—was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. The
Whigs had a majority of forty-seven in the House and of seven in the
Senate, and with the President and Cabinet of the same political
party presented a harmony of aspect frequently wanting during the
three previous administrations. The first measure of the new
dominant party was the repeal of the independent treasury act
passed at the previous session; and the next in order were bills to
establish a system of bankruptcy, and for distribution of public land
revenue. The former was more than a bankrupt law; it was practically
an insolvent law for the abolition of debts at the will of the debtor. It
applied to all persons in debt, allowed them to institute the
proceedings in the district where the petitioner resided, allowed
constructive notices to creditors in newspapers—declared the
abolition of the debt where effects were surrendered and fraud not
proved; and gave exclusive jurisdiction to the federal courts, at the
will of the debtor. It was framed upon the model of the English
insolvent debtors’ act of George the Fourth, and embodied most of
the provisions of that act, but substituting a release from the debt
instead of a release from imprisonment. The bill passed by a close
vote in both Houses.
The land revenue distribution bill of this session had its origin in
the fact that the States and corporations owed about two hundred
millions to creditors in Europe. These debts were in stocks, much
depreciated by the failure in many instances to pay the accruing
interest—in some instances failure to provide for the principal. These
creditors, becoming uneasy, wished the federal government to
assume their debts. The suggestion was made as early as 1838,
renewed in 1839, and in 1840 became a regular question mixed up
with the Presidential election of that year, and openly engaging the
active exertions of foreigners. Direct assumption was not urged;
indirect by giving the public land revenue to the States was the mode
pursued, and the one recommended in the message of President
Tyler. Mr. Calhoun spoke against the measure with more than usual
force and clearness, claiming that it was unconstitutional and
without warrant. Mr. Benton on the same side called it a squandering
of the public patrimony, and pointed out its inexpediency in the
depleted state of the treasury, apart from its other objectionable
features. It passed by a party vote.
This session is remarkable for the institution of the hour rule in
the House of Representatives—a very great limitation upon the
freedom of debate. It was a Whig measure, adopted to prevent delay
in the enactment of pending bills. It was a rigorous limitation,
frequently acting as a bar to profitable debate and checking members
in speeches which really impart information valuable to the House
and the country. No doubt the license of debate has been frequently
abused in Congress, as in all other deliberative assemblies, but the
incessant use of the previous question, which cuts off all debate,
added to the hour rule which limits a speech to sixty minutes
(constantly reduced by interruptions) frequently results in the
transaction of business in ignorance of what they are about by those
who are doing it.
The rule worked so well in the House, for the purpose for which it
was devised—made the majority absolute master of the body—that
Mr. Clay undertook to have the same rule adopted in the Senate; but
the determined opposition to it, both by his political opponents and
friends, led to the abandonment of the attempt in that chamber.
Much discussion took place at this session, over the bill offered in
the House of Representatives, for the relief of the widow of the late
President—General Harrison—appropriating one year’s salary. It was
strenuously opposed by the Democratic members, as
unconstitutional, on account of its principle, as creating a private
pension list, and as a dangerous precedent. Many able speeches were
made against the bill, both in the Senate and House; among others,
the following extract from the speech of an able Senator contains
some interesting facts. He said: “Look at the case of Mr. Jefferson, a
man than whom no one that ever existed on God’s earth were the
human family more indebted to. His furniture and his estate were
sold to satisfy his creditors. His posterity was driven from house and
home, and his bones now lay in soil owned by a stranger. His family
are scattered: some of his descendants are married in foreign lands.
Look at Monroe—the able, the patriotic Monroe, whose services were
revolutionary, whose blood was spilt in the war of Independence,
whose life was worn out in civil service, and whose estate has been
sold for debt, his family scattered, and his daughter buried in a
foreign land. Look at Madison, the model of every virtue, public or
private, and he would only mention in connection with this subject,
his love of order, his economy, and his systematic regularity in all his
habits of business. He, when his term of eight years had expired, sent
a letter to a gentleman (a son of whom is now on this floor) [Mr.
Preston], enclosing a note of five thousand dollars, which he
requested him to endorse, and raise the money in Virginia, so as to
enable him to leave this city, and return to his modest retreat—his
patrimonial inheritance—in that State. General Jackson drew upon
the consignee of his cotton crop in New Orleans for six thousand
dollars to enable him to leave the seat of government without leaving
creditors behind him. These were honored leaders of the republican
party. They had all been Presidents. They had made great sacrifices,
and left the presidency deeply embarrassed; and yet the republican
party who had the power and the strongest disposition to relieve
their necessities, felt they had no right to do so by appropriating
money from the public Treasury. Democracy would not do this. It
was left for the era of federal rule and federal supremacy—who are
now rushing the country with steam power into all the abuses and
corruptions of a monarchy, with its pensioned aristocracy—and to
entail upon the country a civil pension list.”
There was an impatient majority in the House in favor of the
passage of the bill. The circumstances were averse to deliberation—a
victorious party, come into power after a heated election, seeing their
elected candidate dying on the threshold of his administration, poor
and beloved: it was a case for feeling more than of judgment,
especially with the political friends of the deceased—but few of whom
could follow the counsels of the head against the impulsions of the
heart.
The bill passed, and was approved; and as predicted, it established
a precedent which has since been followed in every similar case.
The subject of naval pensions received more than usual
consideration at this session. The question arose on the discussion of
the appropriation bill for that purpose. A difference about a navy—on
the point of how much and what kind—had always been a point of
difference between the two great political parties of the Union,
which, under whatsoever names, are always the same, each
preserving its identity in principles and policy, but here the two
parties divided upon an abuse which no one could deny or defend. A
navy pension fund had been established under the act of 1832, which
was a just and proper law, but on the 3d of March, 1837, an act was
passed entitled “An act for the more equitable distribution of the
Navy Pension Fund.” That act provided: I. That Invalid naval
pensions should commence and date back to the time of receiving
the inability, instead of completing the proof. II. It extended the
pensions for death to all cases of death, whether incurred in the line
of duty or not. III. It extended the widow’s pensions for life, when
five years had been the law both in the army and navy. IV. It adopted
the English system of pensioning children of deceased marines until
they attained their majority.
The effect of this law was to absorb and bankrupt the navy pension
fund, a meritorious fund created out of the government share of
prize money, relinquished for that purpose, and to throw the
pensions, arrears as well as current and future, upon the public
treasury, where it was never intended they were to be. It was to
repeal this act, that an amendment was introduced at this session on
the bringing forward of the annual appropriation bill for navy
pensions, and long and earnest were the debates upon it. The
amendment was lost, the Senate dividing on party lines, the Whigs
against and the Democrats for the amendment. The subject is
instructive, as then was practically ratified and re-enacted the
pernicious practice authorized by the act of 1837, of granting
pensions to date from the time of injury and not from the time of
proof; and has grown up to such proportions in recent years that the
last act of Congress appropriating money for arrears of pensions,
provided for the payment of such an enormous sum of money that it
would have appalled the original projectors of the act of 1837 could
they have seen to what their system has led.
Again, at this session, the object of the tariff occupied the attention
of Congress. The compromise act, as it was called, of 1833, which was
composed of two parts—one to last nine years, for the benefit of
manufactures; the other to last for ever, for the benefit of the
planting and consuming interest—was passed, as hereinbefore
stated, in pursuance of an agreement between Mr. Clay and Mr.
Calhoun and their respective friends, at the time the former was
urging the necessity for a continuance of high tariff for protection
and revenue, and the latter was presenting and justifying before
Congress the nullification ordinance adopted by the Legislature of
South Carolina. To Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun it was a political
necessity, one to get rid of a stumbling-block (which protective tariff
had become); the other to escape a personal peril which his
nullifying ordinance had brought upon him, and with both, it was a
piece of policy, to enable them to combine against Mr. Van Buren, by
postponing their own contention; and a device on the part of its
author (Mr. Clayton, of Delaware) and Mr. Clay to preserve the
protective system. It provided for a reduction of a certain per centage
each year, on the duties for the ensuing nine years, until the revenue
was reduced to 20 per cent. ad valorem on all articles imported into
the country. In consequence the revenue was so reduced that in the
last year, there was little more than half what the exigencies of the
government required, and different modes, by loans and otherwise,
were suggested to meet the deficiency. The Secretary of the Treasury
had declared the necessity of loans and taxes to carry on the
government; a loan bill for twelve millions had been passed; a tariff
bill to raise fourteen millions was depending; and the chairman of
the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Millard Fillmore, defended
its necessity in an able speech. His bill proposed twenty per cent.
additional to the existing duty on certain specified articles, sufficient
to make up the amount wanted. This encroachment on a measure so
much vaunted when passed, and which had been kept inviolate while
operating in favor of one of the parties to it, naturally excited
complaint and opposition from the other, and Mr. Gilmer, of
Virginia, in a speech against the new bill, said: “In referring to the
compromise act, the true characteristics of that act which
recommended it strongly to him, were that it contemplated that
duties were to be levied for revenue only, and in the next place to the
amount only necessary to the supply of the economical wants of the
government. He begged leave to call the attention of the committee
to the principle recognized as the language of the compromise, a
principle which ought to be recognized in all time to come by every
department of the government. It is, that duties to be raised for
revenue are to be raised to such an amount only as is necessary for
an economical administration of the government. Some incidental
protection must necessarily be given, and he, for one, coming from
an anti-tariff portion of the country, would not object to it.”
The bill went to the Senate where it found Mr. Clay and Mr.
Calhoun in positions very different from what they occupied when
the compromise act was passed—then united, now divided—then
concurrent, now antagonistic, and the antagonism general, upon all
measures, was to be special upon this one. Their connection with the
subject made it their function to lead off in its consideration; and
their antagonist positions promised sharp encounters, which did not
fail to come. Mr. Clay said that he “observed that the Senator from
South Carolina based his abstractions on the theories of books on
English authorities, and on the arguments urged in favor of free
trade by a certain party in the British Parliament. Now he, (Mr.
Clay,) and his friends would not admit of these authorities being
entitled to as much weight as the universal practice of nations, which
in all parts of the world was found to be in favor of protecting home
manufactures to an extent sufficient to keep them in a flourishing
condition. This was the whole difference. The Senator was in favor of
book theory and abstractions: he (Mr. Clay) and his friends, were in
favor of the universal practice of nations, and the wholesome and
necessary protection of domestic manufactures.”
Mr. Calhoun in reply, referring to his allusion to the success in the
late election of the tory party in England, said: “The interests,
objects, and aims of the tory party there and the whig party here, are
identical. The identity of the two parties is remarkable. The tory
party are the patrons of corporate monopolies; and are not you?
They are advocates of a high tariff; and are not you? They are
supporters of a national bank; and are not you? They are for corn
laws—laws oppressive to the masses of the people, and favorable to
their own power; and are not you? Witness this bill.*** The success
of that party in England, and of the whig party here, is the success of
the great money power, which concentrates the interests of the two
parties, and identifies their principles.”
The bill was passed by a large majority, upon the general ground
that the government must have revenue.
The chief measure of the session, and the great object of the whig
party—the one for which it had labored for ten years—was for the re-
charter of a national bank. Without this all other measures would be
deemed to be incomplete, and the victorious election itself but little
better than a defeat. The President, while a member of the
Democratic party, had been opposed to the United States Bank; and
to overcome any objections he might have the bill was carefully
prepared, and studiously contrived to avoid the President’s
objections, and save his consistency—a point upon which he was
exceedingly sensitive. The democratic members resisted strenuously,
in order to make the measure odious, but successful resistance was
impossible. It passed both houses by a close vote; and contrary to all
expectation the President disapproved the act, but with such
expressions of readiness to approve another bill which should be free
from the objections which he named, as still to keep his party
together, and to prevent the resignation of his cabinet. In his veto
message the President fell back upon his early opinions against the
constitutionality of a national bank, so often and so publicly
expressed.
The veto caused consternation among the whig members; and Mr.
Clay openly gave expression to his dissatisfaction, in the debate on
the veto message, in terms to assert that President Tyler had violated
his faith to the whig party, and had been led off from them by new
associations. He said: “And why should not President Tyler have
suffered the bill to become a law without his signature? Without
meaning the slightest possible disrespect to him (nothing is further
from my heart than the exhibition of any such feeling towards that
distinguished citizen, long my personal friend), it cannot be
forgotten that he came into his present office under peculiar
circumstances. The people did not foresee the contingency which has
happened. They voted for him as Vice-President. They did not,
therefore, scrutinize his opinions with the care which they probably
ought to have done, and would have done, if they could have looked
into futurity. If the present state of the fact could have been
anticipated—if at Harrisburg, or at the polls, it had been foreseen
that General Harrison would die in one short month after the
commencement of his administration; so that Vice-President Tyler
would be elevated to the presidential chair; that a bill passed by
decisive majorities of the first whig Congress, chartering a national
bank, would be presented for his sanction; and that he would veto
the bill, do I hazard anything when I express the conviction that he
would not have received a solitary vote in the nominating
convention, nor one solitary electoral vote in any State in the
Union?”
The vote was taken on the bill over again, as required by the
constitution, and so far from receiving a two-thirds vote, it received
only a bare majority, and was returned to the House with a message
stating his objections to it, where it gave rise to some violent
speaking, more directed to the personal conduct of the President
than to the objections to the bill stated in his message. The veto was
sustained; and so ended the second attempt to resuscitate the old
United States Bank under a new name. This second movement to
establish the bank has a secret history. It almost caused the
establishment of a new party, with Mr. Tyler as its head; earnest
efforts having been made in that behalf by many prominent Whigs
and Democrats. The entire cabinet, with the exception of Mr.
Webster, resigned within a few days after the second veto. It was a
natural thing for them to do, and was not unexpected. Indeed Mr.
Webster had resolved to tender his resignation also, but on
reconsideration determined to remain and publish his reasons
therefor in a letter to the National Intelligencer, in the following
words:
“Lest any misapprehension should exist, as to the reasons which
led me to differ from the course pursued by my late colleagues, I wish
to say that I remain in my place, first, because I have seen no
sufficient reasons for the dissolution of the late Cabinet, by the
voluntary act of its own members. I am perfectly persuaded of the
absolute necessity of an institution, under the authority of Congress,
to aid revenue and financial operations, and to give the country the
blessings of a good currency and cheap exchanges. Notwithstanding
what has passed, I have confidence that the President will co-operate
with the legislature in overcoming all difficulties in the attainment of
these objects; and it is to the union of the Whig party—by which I
mean the whole party, the Whig President, the Whig Congress, and
the Whig people—that I look for a realization of our wishes. I can
look nowhere else. In the second place if I had seen reasons to resign
my office, I should not have done so, without giving the President
reasonable notice, and affording him time to select the hands to
which he should confide the delicate and important affairs now
pending in this department.”
The conduct of the President in the matter of the vetoes of the two
bank bills produced revolt against him in the party; and the Whigs of
the two Houses of Congress held several formal meetings to consider
what they should do in the new condition of affairs. An address to the
people of the United States was resolved upon. The rejection of the
bank bill gave great vexation to one side, and equal exultation to the
other. The subject was not permitted to rest, however; a national
bank was the life—the vital principle—of the Whig party, without
which it could not live as a party; it was the power which was to give
them power and the political and financial control of the Union. A
second attempt was made, four days after the veto, to accomplish the
end by amendments to a bill relating to the currency, which had been
introduced early in the session. Mr. Sargeant of Pennsylvania, moved
to strike out all after the enacting clause, and insert his amendments,
which were substantially the same as the vetoed bill, except changing
the amount of capital and prohibiting discounts on notes other than
bills of exchange. The bill was pushed to a vote with astonishing
rapidity, and passed by a decided majority. In the Senate the bill
went to a select committee which reported it back without alteration,
as had been foreseen, the committee consisting entirely of friends of
the measure; and there was a majority for it on final passage.
Concurred in by the Senate without alteration, it was returned to the
House, and thence referred to the President for his approval or
disapproval. It was disapproved and it was promulgated in language
intended to mean a repudiation of the President, a permanent
separation of the Whig party from him, and to wash their hands of all
accountability for his acts. An opening paragraph of the address set
forth that, for twelve years the Whigs had carried on a contest for the
regulation of the currency, the equalization of exchanges, the
economical administration of the finances, and the advancement of
industry—all to be accomplished by means of a national bank—
declaring these objects to be misunderstood by no one and the bank
itself held to be secured in the Presidential election, and its
establishment the main object of the extra session. The address then
proceeds to state how these plans were frustrated:
“It is with profound and poignant regret that we find ourselves
called upon to invoke your attention to this point. Upon the great
and leading measure touching this question, our anxious endeavors
to respond to the earnest prayers of the nation have been frustrated
by an act as unlooked for as it is to be lamented. We grieve to say to
you that by the exercise of that power in the constitution which has
ever been regarded with suspicion, and often with odium, by the
people—a power which we had hoped was never to be exhibited on
this subject, by a Whig President—we have been defeated in two
attempts to create a fiscal agent, which the wants of the country had
demonstrated to us, in the most absolute form of proof to be
eminently necessary and proper in the present emergency. Twice
have we with the utmost diligence and deliberation matured a plan
for the collection, safe-keeping and disbursing of the public moneys
through the agency of a corporation adapted to that end, and twice
has it been our fate to encounter the opposition of the President,
through the application of the veto power.*** We are constrained to
say that we find no ground to justify us in the conviction that the veto
of the President has been interposed on this question solely upon
conscientious and well-considered opinions of constitutional scruple
as to his duty in the case presented. On the contrary, too many proofs
have been forced upon our observation to leave us free from the
apprehension that the President has permitted himself to be beguiled
into an opinion that by this exhibition of his prerogative he might be
able to divert the policy of his administration into a channel which
should lead to new political combinations, and accomplish results
which must overthrow the present divisions of party in the country;
and finally produce a state of things which those who elected him, at
least, have never contemplated.
“In this state of things, the Whigs will naturally look with anxiety
to the future, and inquire what are the actual relations between the
President and those who brought him into power; and what, in the
opinion of their friends in Congress, should be their course
hereafter.*** The President by his withdrawal of confidence from his
real friends in Congress and from the members of his cabinet; by his
bestowal of it upon others notwithstanding their notorious
opposition to leading measures of his administrations has voluntarily
separated himself from those by whose exertions and suffrage he was
elevated to that office through which he has reached his present
exalted station.*** The consequence is, that those who brought the
President into power can be no longer, in any manner or degree,
justly held responsible or blamed for the administration of the
executive branch of the government; and the President and his
advisers should be exclusively hereafter deemed accountable.*** The
conduct of the President has occasioned bitter mortification and
deep regret. Shall the party, therefore, yielding to sentiments of
despair, abandon its duty, and submit to defeat and disgrace? Far
from suffering such dishonorable consequences, the very
disappointment which it has unfortunately experienced should serve
only to redouble its exertions, and to inspire it with fresh courage to
persevere with a spirit unsubdued and a resolution unshaken, until
the prosperity of the country is fully re-established, and its liberties
firmly secured against all danger from the abuses, encroachments or
usurpations of the executive department of the government.”
This was the manifesto, so far as it concerns the repudiation of
President Tyler, which Whig members of Congress put forth: it was
answered (under the name of an address to his constituents) by Mr.
Cushing, in a counter special plea—counter to it on all points—
especially on the main question of which party the President was to
belong to; the manifesto of the Whigs assigning him to the
democracy—the address of Mr. Cushing, claiming him for the Whigs.
It was especially severe on Mr. Clay, as setting up a caucus
dictatorship to coerce the President; and charged that the address
emanated from this caucus, and did not embody or represent the
sentiments of all Whig leaders; and referred to Mr. Webster’s letter,
and his remaining in the cabinet as proof of this. But it was without
avail against the concurrent statements of the retiring senators, and
the confirmatory statements of many members of Congress. The
Whig party recoiled from the President, and instead of the unity
predicted by Mr. Webster, there was diversity and widespread
dissension. The Whig party remained with Mr. Clay; Mr. Webster
retired, Mr. Cushing was sent on a foreign mission, and the
President, seeking to enter the democratic ranks, was refused by
them, and left to seek consolation in privacy, for his political errors
and omissions.
The extra session, called by President Harrison, held under Mr.
Tyler, dominated by Mr. Clay, commenced May 31, and ended Sept.
13, 1841—and was replete with disappointed calculations, and nearly
barren of permanent results. The purposes for which it was called
into being, failed. The first annual message of President Tyler, at the
opening of the regular session in December, 1841, coming in so soon
after the termination of the extra session, was brief and meagre of
topics, with few points of interest.
In the month of March, 1842, Mr. Henry Clay resigned his place in
the Senate, and delivered a valedictory address to that body. He had
intended this step upon the close of the previous presidential
campaign, but had postponed it to take personal charge of the
several measures which would be brought before Congress at the
special session—the calling of which he foresaw would be necessary.
He resigned not on account of age, or infirmity, or disinclination for
public life; but out of disgust—profound and inextinguishable. He
had been basely defeated for the Presidential nomination, against the
wishes of the Whig party, of which he was the acknowledged head—
he had seen his leading measures vetoed by the President whom his
party had elected—the downfall of the Bank for which he had so
often pledged himself—and the insolent attacks of the petty
adherents of the administration in the two Houses: all these causes
acting on his proud and lofty spirit, induced this withdrawal from
public life for which he was so well fitted.
The address opened with a retrospect of his early entrance into the
Senate, and a grand encomium upon its powers and dignity as he
had found it, and left it. Memory went back to that early year, 1806,
when just past thirty years of age, he entered the United States
Senate, and commenced his high career—a wide and luminous
horizon before him, and will and talent to fill it. He said: “From the
year 1806, the period of my entering upon this noble theatre of my
public service, with but short intervals, down to the present time, I
have been engaged in the service of my country. Of the nature and
value of those services, which I may have rendered during my long
career of public life, it does not become me to speak. History, if she
deigns to notice me, and posterity—if a recollection of any humble
service which I may have rendered, shall be transmitted to posterity
—will be the best, truest, and most impartial judges; and to them I
defer for a decision upon their value. But, upon one subject, I may be
allowed to speak. As to my public acts and public conduct, they are
for the judgment of my fellow-citizens; but my private motives of
action—that which prompted me to take the part which I may have
done, upon great measures during their progress in the national
councils, can be known only to the Great Searcher of the human
heart and myself; and I trust I shall be pardoned for repeating again
a declaration which I made thirty years ago: that whatever error I
may have committed—and doubtless I have committed many during
my public service—I may appeal to the Divine Searcher of hearts for
the truth of the declaration which I now make, with pride and
confidence, that I have been actuated by no personal motives—that I
have sought no personal aggrandizement—no promotion from the
advocacy of those various measures on which I have been called to
act—that I have had an eye, a single eye, a heart, a single heart, ever
devoted to what appeared to be the best interests of the country.”
Mr. Clay led a great party, and for a long time, whether he dictated
to it or not, and kept it well bound together, without the usual means
of forming and leading parties. It was surprising that, without power
and patronage, he was able so long and so undividedly to keep so
great a party together, and lead it so unresistingly. He had great
talents, but not equal to some whom he led. He had eloquence—
superior in popular effect, but not equal in high oratory to that of
some others. But his temperament was fervid, his will was strong,
and his courage daring; and these qualities, added to his talents, gave
him the lead and supremacy in his party, where he was always
dominant. The farewell address made a deep impression upon the
Senators present; and after its close, Mr. Preston brought the
ceremony to a conclusion, by moving an adjournment, which was
agreed to.
Again at this session was the subject of the tariff considered, but
this time, as a matter of absolute necessity, to provide a revenue.
Never before were the coffers and the credit of the treasury at so low
an ebb. A deficit of fourteen millions in the treasury—a total inability
to borrow, either at home or abroad, the amount of the loan of twelve
millions authorized the year before—the treasury notes below par,
and the revenues from imports inadequate and decreasing.
The compromise act of 1833 in reducing the duties gradually
through nine years, to a fixed low rate; the act of 1837 in distributing
the surplus revenue; and the continual and continued distribution of
the land revenue, had brought about this condition of things. The
remedy was sought in a bill increasing the tariff, and suspending the
land revenue distribution. Two such bills were passed in a single
month, and both vetoed by the President. It was now near the end of
August. Congress had been in session for an unprecedentedly long
time. Adjournment could not be deferred, and could not take place
without providing for the Treasury. The compromise act and the land
distribution were the stumbling-blocks: it was resolved to sacrifice
them together; and a bill was introduced raising the duties above the
fixed rate of twenty per cent., and that breach of the mutual
assurance in relation to the compromise, immediately in terms of the
assurance, suspended the land revenue distribution—to continue it
suspended while duties above the compromise limit continued to be
levied. And as that has been the case ever since, the distribution of
the land revenue has been suspended ever since. The bill was passed,
and approved by the President, and Congress thereupon adjourned.
The subject of the navy was also under consideration at this
session. The naval policy of the United States was a question of party
division from the origin of parties in the early years of the
government—the Federal party favoring a strong and splendid navy,
the Republican a moderate establishment, adapted to the purposes
of defense more than of offense. And this line of division has
continued. Under the Whig regime the policy for a great navy
developed itself. The Secretary of the Navy recommended a large
increase of ships, seamen and officers, involving a heavy expense,
though the government was not in a condition to warrant any such
expenditure, and no emergency required an increase in that branch
of the public service. The vote was taken upon the increase proposed
by the Secretary of the Navy, and recommended by the President;
and it was carried, the yeas and nays being well defined by the party
line.
The first session of the twenty-eighth Congress, which convened
December 1843, exhibited in its political complexion, serious losses
in the Whig following. The Democratic candidate for Speaker of the
House of Representatives, was elected over the Whig candidate—the
vote standing 128 to 59. Thus an adverse majority of more than two
to one was the result to the Whig party at the first election after the
extra session of 1841. The President’s message referred to the treaty
which had lately been concluded with Great Britain relative to the
northwestern territory extending to the Columbia river, including
Oregon and settling the boundary lines; and also to a pending treaty
with Texas for her annexation to the United States; and concluded
with a recommendation for the establishment of a paper currency to
be issued and controlled by the Federal government.
For more than a year before the meeting of the Democratic
Presidential Convention in Baltimore, in May 1844, it was evident to
leading Democrats that Martin Van Buren was the choice of the
party. To overcome this popular current and turn the tide in favor of
Mr. Calhoun, who desired the nomination, resort was had to the
pending question of the annexation of Texas. Mr. Van Buren was
known to be against it, and Mr. Calhoun for it. To gain time, the
meeting of the convention was postponed from December previous,
which had been the usual time for holding such elections, until the
following May. The convention met, and consisted of two hundred
and sixty-six delegates, a decided majority of whom were for Mr. Van
Buren, and cast their votes accordingly on the first ballot. But a
chairman had been selected, who was adverse to his nomination; and
aided by a rule adopted by the convention, which required a
concurrence of two-thirds to effect a nomination, the opponents of
Mr. Van Buren were able to accomplish his defeat. Mr. Calhoun had,
before the meeting of the convention, made known his
determination, in a public address, not to suffer his name to go
before that assemblage as a candidate for the presidency, and stated
his reasons for so doing, which were founded mainly on the manner
in which the convention was constituted; his objections being to the
mode of choosing delegates, and the manner of their giving in their

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Towards an empirically motivated

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A similar distinction sees ‘text’ as a notion which applies to SURFACE STRUCTURE,

The Text in the Beginning: Structural and Generative

Hjelmslev. Outside of Europe, structural linguistics developed in the course of the

In Europe, the founder of what came to be called structural linguistics was

family tradition, which contained noteworthy exponents in the ﬁelds of chemistry

Benveniste’s criticism of Saussure’s concept of ‘arbitrariness of the sign’.5 Finally,

utterance is extralinguistic, which is not necessarily always clear. Although

mind, which is a “sub-logical system” in which the principle of non-contradiction is

data that could be controlled by an outside observer» (my translation of Lepschy

ambiguities that it contains and to operate transformations on a single sentence,

With the publication of Syntactic Structures (1957),20 Chomsky introduced new

(Rate:(Fast)) (Character:(Following Y))

The Text from a Logical Point of View:

semantics of natural languages must be at least as comprehensible as a natural

Logicians tried to build a semantic system of natural languages based on extension.

Therefore, the solution to the most important problems of semantics might be

The Text in Text Linguistics43

(especially literary texts) in the context of structuralism and semiotics. As we

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