Under the Dim Light

Under the Dim Light 

TANAKA Akio  

                                        

I frequently talked with CHINO Eiichi at the coffee shop near the station we used to get on. The shop was at the second floor and the steps upstairs always sounded squeaking. Under the dim light the topics of conversation was on language or linguistics after all. He was already the university professor but I was a poor research student. But he was always showed me the general tenderness. 

The subject he gave me were impressive and useful for me, in which the most important is the history of the Linguistic Circle of Prague and the excellent pioneers of language study. He had of course the unique approach to the study but I had never any conspicuous one except boundless interest on the study.

In his wide and precious telling for me I gradually determined my course to proceed. It was the making of basic and radical foundation on natural language by searching the structure of language through simple and clear description. For keeping this difficult aim I had a decision that there was only way to use mathematics that I had abandoned at the past for its hardness.

In my age 20s, I had read Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nicolas Bourbaki in concentrating. I did not clearly understand  Wittgenstein’s approach. But I borrowed his writing style that was simple and clear. So my early work’s descriptions were nearly at him. But I decided that I never adopted strongly-intuitive thinking.

I always considered mathematical basis or analogy. My aim was the independence from the intuitive description. Keeping on this course, there was seen the mathematical basis that I must adopt the model in which language universals are clearly described. I entered to the mathematical description of study that was confirmed premises of my way.

 

 

At the North Alps of Japan
The flowers are alike the time
They were receiving the hard cold winds at the mountains.

На севере Альп Японии.

В альпийских растений,
 которые получают жесткие холодные ветры в горах.

Tokyo
1 August 2012
Sekinan Research Field of Language

The Time of Wittgenstein

The Time of Wittgenstein  TANAKA Akio     
                     

There surely exists the time of Wittgenstein for me.
That time about in my 30s, in the middle of 1970s.
One may aware of the kernel of the problem after almost all the hardships were gone and the problem is going under pursuing in the daily work for oneself, as Wittgenstein wrote at 6.521 in TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS.Wittgenstein wrote on language immanently at least in TRACTATUS.
He also said in TRACTATUS 6.432 that how world exists  does not care from the higher dimensions.
I also wanted to write on language from the immanent side in language.
But I had not any pursuing method for writing on language at that time, only remaining set theory typically presented by Bourbaki that some translations were surely on my desk.Set theory was enough fascinating at the time, but it did not give me any relative and constructive situations on language or widely on the world. It was isolated and non-relative for writing on language. I wanted the bond of the world.

Now I have geometry for which the world can be bonded enough tightly. In 1970s I was never aware of the existence of geometry by myself, probably not being influenced from Wittgenstein’s 6.35 in TRACTATUS, Geometry absolutely tell nothing on how the figure is and where the figure situated.

So I had remain silently in the days not being able to write on the theme, the basic essence of language. Then I never knew the object on language, language universals that was taught from CHINO Eiichi later in 1980s. CHINO showed me the paper of Sergej Karcevskij, Du dualisme asymétrique du  singe linguistique. The theme determined my remain life hereafter. CHINO was the true teacher of my study.

Wittgenstein wrote at the last 6.54 of TRACTATUS that his some propositions must be abandoned. I began to go through the wood of hard theme of language universals by mathematics especially using geometry. About what can be told to, I never must be silent. 

Reference
Citation from Ludwig Wittgenstein

Tokyo
January 20, 2012
Sekinan Research Field of Language