Dasein - Monoskop

HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOIjOGY AND LANGU AGE AS CALCULUS 61
tion by another content, or—to use Husserl's expression—as being
"founded" in another:
A content of the species A is founded upon a content of the
species B, if an A can by its essence (i.e., legally, in virtue of its
specific nature) not exist, unless a B also exists: this leaves open
whether the coexistence of a C, a D etc. is needed or not. 203
Husserl applies these notions to the distinction between categoremata
and syncategoremata. He regards the former as being independent
meanings and the latter as being dependent meanings.
Dependent meanings stand in need of completion by independent
meanings.
The same point can also be expressed by attending to meaningintending
acts instead of attending to meanings themselves. Just
as a complex meaning is built up from several other meanings, so
a corresponding act of meaning-intending consists of several subacts
or partial acts. An independent meaning can then be defined
as one that can be "the full, entire meaning of a concrete act of
meaning" 204 , whereas a dependent cannot. Husserl observes that
these relations between meanings can be formulated as laws that
govern the combination of given meanings into new ones: "To each
case of non-independent meaning, a law of essence applies ... a law
regulating the meaning's need of completion by further meanings
»205
« • •
Laws governing the combination of meanings pertain especially
to the distinction between possible and impossible meanings. Laws
excluding impossible meanings exclude "nonsense", they are laws
that like Carnap's formation rules 206 lie below strict logic laws that
rule out "absurdity", i.e., formal contradiction. For example, the
meaning combination "a round rectangle" is a well formed expression
and thus a possible meaning; it is not "nonsense", but mere "absurdity".
Cases of nonsense are expressions like "a man and is". 207
In the first case, the case of the round rectangle, we have a logical
contradiction, but the logical grammatical law, according to which
the semantical categories of article meaning, adjective matter, and
substantive matter can—in the given order—be combined into a new
meaning, is not violated. In other words, the given combination is