Another Short History of Linguistics (62)

Semantic is the property of pictogram, when Aristotle first introduce it in to alphabet language, people felt very exciting. But semantic language like any other expression system that only under certain condition it may communicated conveniently. Out of that limit, it won’t work. The so called ontology is out of the limit. It believe that everything came from a unique word called substance, like what Aristotle shown us:

You may noticed that between the species and individual, the ‘differentiae’ is missing. And obviously the differentiae is the name of the person itself. Can we subdivide the person into Aristotle’s wife, Aristotle’s son, Aristotle’s daughter, Aristotle’s grandson, Aristotle’s teacher, Aristotle’s student, Aristotle’s lawyer, Aristotle’s baker etc.? Of course we can. But these expression is meaningless. For what we are necessary is a language that it may increase the utility rate of every words and it may reducing the energy to learn it.

So the only way to evaluate a language. One is how easy to learn, the other is how easy to use. That means to say the compound words are easy to learn (semantics) but hard to speak (for it longer than single word) while the synthesis words are hard to learn but easy for express. Only increase the number of species of sound we can get benefit from both side. From this view, we may also easy understand that anything the grammar done is making language complex.

Ontology came from the thought that believe everything came from a simple origin, similar the Taoism or Confucianism. But it was proved not true. The word science translated into Japanese as 科学means sections or branches study, against the old knowledge that believed all theory was the same. It wanted to express the idea that every branch of knowledge has its own property.