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6.11—
Conclusion

It would seem, then, that it is not true that semantics is properly concerned with a set of abstract entities called "abstract languages." It is true that we can begin with full-blooded languages and abstract away from their real-world features in order to be left with an object that is more suitable to rigorous study, much as we may do so in, say, physics. Indeed,


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in both cases there are two levels of abstraction: a richly construed model that treats the real-world processes in terms of their mathematical relations, and a sparsely construed model that is a purely abstract mathematical entity. Neither of these, however, has the features needed to count as an "abstract language." The rich model indeed has the features needed to count as a language, but is not truly abstract: the linguistic categories it works with are the convention-laden ones of the full-blooded language . The sparse model is indeed abstract, but there is nothing about the model, as such, that would make it count as a language. This is equally true for the semantic and the syntactic aspects of language. And hence the criticism that the Semiotic Analysis is really a hybrid of a nonconventional pure semantics (and pure syntax) plus a conventional element required only for symbols used in communication fails.


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Chapter Six— Rejecting Nonconventional Syntax and Semantics for Symbols
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