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Studies in Indian Philosophy
variety of things. Under 'words" may be included morphemes, words and compounds of various grammatical categories : simple and compound nouns, verbs, particles, prefixes, and so forth. Under "meanings" may be included individual substances, processes, powers, classes of these things, properties and ideas of any of the foregoing, and perhaps other things as well. To cover this kind of range in English one needs to resorts to one of the most general and flexible semantic terms like "meaning" or "singnification".
287,
The third verse of our text tells us that the word-meaning relation is closely connected with the genitive case and with something (vācya-vācaka) which we render in English as "significance"5 :
The relation between words and meanings is by means of the genitive :
This is the signifier (vācaka) of that,
that is the signified (vācya) of this'.
Thus the thatness (tattvam) of the relation is signified.(SS 3) We cannot give a full account of this relation, and above all it should not be hastily identified with any modern counterpart from philosophical or commonsense semantics. We have chosen the word 'signifies' as a placeholder for a very comprehensive semantic relation whose content could be gradually unfolded by developing Bhartṛhari's full theory of language in its surrounding philosophical fromewark. The main thing for present purposes is to observe that the same Sanskrit term (vācakam) recurs in the next verse, modifying the term 'expression' (abhidhanam): ©
Of the relation there is no signifying expression (vācakam abhidhanam) on the basis of a property belonging to it. (SS 4a) Now we want to examine the logical bearing of this verse on the proposition:
B1 The significance relation is unnameable.
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