FORMAL SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS: AN OVERVIEW OF SELECTED DEFINITIONS

The paper discusses the development of formal semantics and pragmatics and traces various attempts at defining and delimiting these disciplines. It shows how the original definition, provided by Charles Morris (in 1938), has undergone several important changes and modifications. The paper discusses the contribution of Rudolf Carnap, Richard Montague and Polish logicians (Alfred Tarski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski) towards the understanding of formal semantics and the methodological issues connected with formal approaches to natural language. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the problem of context in Montague Grammar and in more recent dynamic approaches to semantics and pragmatics, and offers a tentative classification of approaches to pragmatics.