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man individual, let us say, Parmenides? The causal chain is broken when Parmenides dies. From this point on, the speaker w telling the hearer y something about Parmenides must introduce into the picture some definite descriptions (for instance, the philosopher who said that nothing moves or that man, son of So and So, who died yesterday). The speaker y must learn to use the name Parmenides according to the set of contextual instructions provided by w and is obliged to resort to contextual elements every time he wants to ascertain whether the name is used in the right sense: Parmenides? Do you mean the philosopher? It is true that the instructions provided by w "causes" the competence of y, but from this point of view every theory of language is a causal one. Since language is learned, undoubtedly every mother "causes" the fact that her children learn language, as well as every dictionary causes the fact that its users learn how to use words. In the same terms, the American Constitution ''causes" the fact that every American citizen knows his or her duties and rights. It is exactly such a form of nonphysical and indirect causality that calls for a pragmatic explanation of the process.
Theory (ii). Two pages after having proposed his first definition of pragmatics, Morris (1938:7) writes:
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In virtue of semiosis . . . given the sign vehicle as an object of response, the organism expects a situation of such and kind and, on the basis of this expectation, can partially prepare itself in advance for what may develop. The response to things through the intermediary of signs is thus biologically a continuation of the same process in which the distance senses have taken precedence over the contact senses in the control of conduct in higher animal forms. . . . With this orientation, certain of the terms which have previously been used appear in a new light. The relation of a sign vehicle to its designatum is the actual taking-account in the conduct of the interpreter of a class of things in virtue of the response to the sign vehicle, and what are so taken account of are designata. The semantical rule has as its correlate in the pragmatical dimension the habit of the interpreter to use the sign vehicle under certain circumstances and, conversely, to expect such and such to be the case when the sign is used. The formation and transformation rules correspond to the actual sign combinations and transitions which the interpreter uses, or to stipulations for the use of signs which he lays down for himself in the same way in which he attempts to control deliberately other modes of behavior with reference to persons and things. Considered from the point of view of pragmatics, a linguistic structure is a system of behavior: corresponding to analytical sentences are the relations between sign responses to the more inclusive sign responses of which they are segments; corresponding to synthetical sentences are those relations between sign responses which are not relations of part to whole.
Even though extrapolated from their behavioristic framework, these

 
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