[D-G] Hjelmslevian analysis

[malgosia askanas]

Dear Harald,

I have some questions about your proposed analysis:

-  Do the content-substance and content-form depend on the recipient? 
For example, if you say to me "No prime number is bifactional", and 
you know what "bifactional" means but I don't, are the 
content-substance and content-form of that sentence different for you 
and for me?

-  Let's take instead the sentence "The population of no town east of 
the river Bahaka is a prime number".  It would be a bit hard to 
argue, it seems to me, that the content-form of that sentence is like 
a mental photo - what would it be a photo of?   Or does "photo", in 
this case, mean some kind of a _diagram_, representing a concrete but 
complex relationship between a (possibly non-existent) river, the 
direction "east", towns, populations, counting, numbers, primeness, 
etc.?

- If we were actually sitting in a room in which there was a cat and 
a rug, and I said "The cat is on the rug", would the presence of a 
(single) cat and a (single) rug be reflected in the content-form of 
my enunciation?  In other words, is the connection between 
enunciations and actual  states of affairs part of semiotic analysis? 
And if so, how does it enter the content-form?

With many thanks,
-malgosia


At 10:44 AM -0500 11/17/10, Harald Wenk wrote:
>Dear Maglosia,
>
>(I got some trouble with the computer, therefore some type print 
>errors are (unavoidable) there)
>
>Unfortunaltely my both references, which I strongly apppreciate
>
>"Sproget" (language) (Sprache in german) by Hjemslev
>and "La stratification de language"  are not at hand.
>
>I spite of that, risking error, I would describe thsi way.
>
>
>
>The form of the content is the image, like a photo,  of a cat on the rug.
>
>The substance of that image, the substance of the content,  ist the 
>attribute thinking (from Spinoza),
>the "understanding" namely:
>
>A recognition with the aid  of memory,
>of identifiying the obejcts (cat, rug) negelctging the rest of the 
>secne  of that photolike picture. This picture maybe also be 
>contsructerd in a dream way by putting togetehr pictres of a cat and 
>a rug.
>
>Maybe the "recognition" is declared as "form" of the content.
>
>
>The form of the expterssion is a describing proposition with
>subject substauive cat, predicat konjugated verb "is" with 
>prepsotion object substsbtive "rug".
>
>The form of the substancde is thus composed  of the the voice, the 
>phonems connected to the
>signs of the letter, which are images and to be identfied or to be 
>recognized too.
>The substance, signs of the letter are in the attribute "extension" 
>or real material.
>
>
>The content maybe more difficult, if the sense, the content,  is 
>more metaphorical,
>like in the famous
>"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" by Tennessee Williams
>
>
>I hope, this  is what you asked.