24. Rāmānujācārya: The Essence of the System: Book on Language
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
Elisa Freschi [+]
University of Toronto
Description
A key problem in Sanskrit philosophy of language has to do with the nature of the signifying element in a sentence. That is, are words that make up a sentence able to convey meanings, or is this exclusively reserved for whole sentences, or perhaps something beyond sentences? Mīmāṃsā authors formulate two main theories to address this problem. The first is the theory of the “Connection of already-expressed word-meanings” (abhihitānvaya), according to which words designate their meanings which then are connected to the sentence meaning. The second is the theory of the “Expression of a connected sentence-meaning (anvitābhidhāna),” which entails that words first connect with one another and then, once connected, communicate the sentence meaning. These theories were first formulated by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhākara Miśra (ca. 7th century CE) respectively, who were the main authors of the Mīmāṃsā school. Both rely on three factors for their understanding of the sentence’s meaning. These factors are proximity (isolated word-meanings do not make a sentence-meaning, nor can one make a sentence out of words uttered at different times), (2) semantic fitness (only meanings that are semantically fit can be connected into a sentence meaning), and (3) syntactic expectancy (the expectation of a verb for its complements and vice versa).