Proposition query

[Tahir Wood]

I have a query for these lists. It concerns the status of the proposition within linguistic theory. 

Kintsch (1998:69) says that “propositions appear to be the semantic processing units of the mind” and that they have only an indirect relationship to the syntax of sentences, this because natural language has “many purposes other than the expression of meaning”, whereas propositions are those representations that are “focused on meaning”. 

This is indeed my point of departure but it doesn't exactly take us very far theoretically. I'm working on the theoretical aspect but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. If anyone can point me to a good theoretical discussion of the proposition that would be useful -- particularly if it can be located easliy on the web! -- I would be most grateful. 

Concerning my own leanings, I am most interested in a notion that would reflect psychologism rather than logicism (as in Frege, Russell etc)? For that reason I would expect that the notion of truth would not come into a linguistic definition of the proposition. (I am aware also of the theologically inclined debates about whether propositions 'exist' or not.)

BTW it also doesn't make sense to me to treat the proposition as a grammatical entity, where it is regarded as more or les synonymous with predication or sentence. But if a proposition is a meaning that is independent of the constructions of any specific language then this would suggest a 'depth' approach to semantics, which is anathema to many linguistics approaches nowadays, not so?

I'm trying to show that there is a theoretical place for the proposition which doesn't depend on truth, is not inherently linked to grammatical structures in any language, and which is therefore distinct from judgement, predicate, entence, clause, etc. Any help, or refutations, would be appreciated.

Tahir




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