Atomism and semantics in the philosophy of Jerrold Katz

Abstract

The semantic markers and distinguishers are used as the means by which we can decompose the meaning of a lexical item (on one sense) into its atomic concepts, thus enabling us to exhibit the semantic structure in a dictionary entry and the semantic relations between dictionary entries. That is, the semantic relations among the various senses of a lexical item and among the various senses of different lexical items are represented by formal relations between markers and distinguishers. (Katz and Fodor 1964, 496)2