Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“If any move or gesture that we perform can be recorded as syntactic information then we are, in fact, looking at a computational theocracy. For Horwitz, syntax, a formal relation in which one sign adds information regarding another, precedes semantics. How does it stand with the originary hypothesis? There is a question here of whether the hypothesis entails ontological assumptions, and another question about whether it transcends the semantics/syntax distinction and introduces a fresh vocabulary. At any rate, syntax and semantics, if we’re working with these traditional linguistic categories, needs to be complemented by pragmatics, which in these concluding remarks comes to play an implicit role in Horwitz’s analysis. Syntax, in the sense of subject-predicate or topic-comment relations, doesn’t emerge until the creation of the declarative sentence—but that doesn’t mean there’s not a more originary syntax, in which the gesture on the periphery predicates the center as the center of that periphery. Do we go further, and embed the originary event in the animal and natural worlds from which it distinguishes its participants? Is that necessary or is agnosticism in such matters both viable and preferable—it’s a position I’ve maintained so far and so, I think have those in GA, but no one has ever really posed, much less pressed, the question.”

— Adam Katz, Fit to Measure · Oct 03, 2023 · Bouvard Substack