Leśniewski's early Liar, Tarski and natural language
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Leśniewski's early Liar, Tarski and natural language
zbMATH Open document ID: 1062.03005
author: Arianna Betti
published in: Annals of Pure and Applied Logic
publication date: 2004-08-06T00:00:00Z
review text: The paper is based on the invited lecture given by the author at the Tarski Centenary Conference (Warszaw, May--June, 2001). It contributes to reconstructing backgrounds of Tarski's analysis of semantics of natural languages in the light of the ideas of Leśniewski. Grounding on the early (1911--1913) writings of Leśniewski, the author first gives an account of Leśniewski's semantics and his analysis of the Liar paradox and the principle of excluded middle. Then she retraces some aspects of influence of Leśniewski on Tarski, his sole doctoral student. In particular, she shows that it is Leśniewski's, not Tarski's, discovery that natural language is hopelessly infected with contradictions. The author also points out that among the things which Tarski was taught by his master were at least the following: how to analyse quotation marks, the language/metalanguage distinction, the idea that truth is language-relative, the observation that natural language is closed. The first two of these issues are discussed in detail in the paper.
reviewed by: Jānis Cīrulis
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 03-03
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 03A05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
zbMATH DE Number: 2083202
zbMATH Keywords: Leśniewski
zbMATH Keywords: Liar paradox
zbMATH Keywords: metalanguage
zbMATH Keywords: natural language
zbMATH Keywords: semantics
zbMATH Keywords: Tarski
zbMATH Keywords: truth
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: j.apal.2003.11.024
OpenAlex ID: W2008282113
cites work: Truth, syntax and modality. Proceedings of the Temple University conference on alternative semantics
cites work: Q4023820
cites work: The logical systems of Lesniewski
cites work: Q4368851
cites work: Q4661903
cites work: Q5839923
cites work: Q4342078
cites work: Q4315716
DOI: 10.1016/J.APAL.2003.11.024
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2083202