Leśniewski's early Liar, Tarski and natural language (Q598317)

The paper is based on the invited lecture given by the author at the Tarski Centenary Conference (Warszaw, May--June, 2001). It contributes to reconstructing backgrounds of Tarski's analysis of semantics of natural languages in the light of the ideas of Leśniewski. Grounding on the early (1911--1913) writings of Leśniewski, the author first gives an account of Leśniewski's semantics and his analysis of the Liar paradox and the principle of excluded middle. Then she retraces some aspects of influence of Leśniewski on Tarski, his sole doctoral student. In particular, she shows that it is Leśniewski's, not Tarski's, discovery that natural language is hopelessly infected with contradictions. The author also points out that among the things which Tarski was taught by his master were at least the following: how to analyse quotation marks, the language/metalanguage distinction, the idea that truth is language-relative, the observation that natural language is closed. The first two of these issues are discussed in detail in the paper.