Para una formalización «topológica» de la semántica

Abstract

The logical formalization aroused great hopes for the acquisition of the utmost rigour in language studies and has indeed proved to be successful when applied to the study of syntax (Chomsky). Semantics, on the contrary, has resisted the attempts of axiomatization, falling once and again on the psycologisms and subjetivisms which logic was precisely supposed to overecome. New promising ways, have unexpectedly been opened in the field of Topology studies. In his «theory of catastrophes» (TC) a pure geometric-topologic applied to the appearance and stabilization of morphologies, Rene Thom proposed a framework in which language is included as one form of morphology. Petitot and Wildgen have carried Thom's proposal still further, and tried to construct a theory of meaning. In the present study, rather than give an account of these investigations, Pérez Herranz and López Cruces would like to illustrate their application to a piece of literary writing, namely, the poem Cara a cara by Jorge Guillén. The analysis is twofold: on the one hand the traditional kind, and on the other hand the hermeneutic-catastrofist one. The thesis they defend is as follows: they can identify the hierarchy of verbs as presented by TC in a text dating from much earlier than the mentioned theory, which means a text that has not been constructed ad hoc. They hope to demostrate that the verbs in this poem occur according to semantic rather than pragmatic constraints [contraintes], a fact which will put them on the way towards a semantic formalization.