Dasein - Monoskop

62 PART II
syntartically possible. In the case of "a man and is" there is no law
allowing for this combination. Husserl also expresses his idea of an
inquiry into possible meaning combinations by speaking of his aim
as "investigating the apriori system of the formal structures which
leave open all material specificity of meaning, in a 'form-theory of
meanings'". 208
In its final form, this theory is supposed to start from the most
basic, primitive semantical categories and to contain all laws governing
the derivation of complications and modifications of these
primitives into complex meaning forms. As part of this grammar
Husserl also calls for the formulation of special transformations for
handling the use-mention distinction (that is, special rules are needed
for cases of suppositio materialis like 'and is a word'), for nominaiization,
the distinction between attributive and predicative position
of adjectives, and much more. 209
As for the motivation of this whole enterprise, Husserl mentions
two reasons. First, what is provided by the ideal logical grammar is a
recursive definition of all possible meanings in a strict mathematical
way. Thus a foundation for logic and science is provided: " This
lawfullnessf through its a priori, purely categorial character, brings to
scientific awareness a basic chapter in the constitution of 9 theoretical
reason'." 2 * 0 Second, the logical grammar identifies an "absolutely
fixed ideal framework" for all languages, thus providing a framework
that is not only applicable to all languages, but also presupposed by
all of them. Husserl claims that linguists have indeed been relying
on something like this ideal framework all along, without however
having been fully aware of the possibility of a science directed solely
to these categories:
One must have this [ideal framework] in mind in order to be able
to ask significantly: How does German, Latin, Chinese etc., express
'the' existential proposition, 'the' categorical proposition,
'the' antecedent of a hypothetical, 'the' plural, Hhe' modalities
of possibility and probability, 'the' negative, etc.? 211
From the vantage point of our study it is interesting that Husserl
puts a great deal of emphasis on the universal character of this ideal
structure. Needless to say, its alleged existence provides in a natural