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Full Idea
We consider the meanings of words in isolation, which leads us to accept an idea as the meaning, and words with no mental picture appear to have no mental content. But only in a proposition have the words really a meaning.
Gist of Idea
Words in isolation seem to have ideas as meanings, but words have meaning in propositions
Source
Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §60)
Book Ref
Frege,Gottlob: 'The Foundations of Arithmetic (Austin)', ed/tr. Austin,J.L. [Blackwell 1980], p.71
A Reaction
Frege (later) sees concepts as functions, which need input and output to be understood. It points to the idea that meaning is nothing more than usage. Something, though, is missing. As ever, WHY does something have a particular function?
| 1773 | A sentence always has signification, but a word by itself never does [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 13467 | Leibniz was the first modern to focus on sentence-sized units (where empiricists preferred word-size) [Leibniz, by Hart,WD] |
| 8646 | Words in isolation seem to have ideas as meanings, but words have meaning in propositions [Frege] |
| 7732 | Never ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition [Frege] |
| 8446 | We understand new propositions by constructing their sense from the words [Frege] |
| 18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
| 21700 | Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine] |
| 21701 | Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine] |
| 8170 | Sentences are the primary semantic units, because they can say something [Dummett] |
| 19131 | We recognise sentences at once as linguistic units; we then figure out their parts [Davidson] |
| 3588 | Foundationalists base meaning in words, coherentists base it in sentences [Williams,M] |