Under the Dim Light

Under the Dim Light

TANAKA Akio


I frequently talked with CHINO Eiichi at the coffee shop near the station we used to get on. The shop was at the second floor and the steps upstairs always sounded squeaking. Under the dim light the topics of conversation was on language or linguistics after all. He was already the university professor but I was a poor research student. But he was always showed me the general tenderness.

The subject he gave me were impressive and useful for me, in which the most important is the history of the Linguistic Circle of Prague and the excellent pioneers of language study. He had of course the unique approach to the study but I had never any conspicuous one except boundless interest on the study.

In his wide and precious telling for me I gradually determined my course to proceed. It was the making of basic and radical foundation on natural language by searching the structure of language through simple and clear description. For keeping this difficult aim I had a decision that there was only way to use mathematics that I had abandoned at the past for its hardness.

In my age 20s, I had read Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nicolas Bourbaki in concentrating. I did not clearly understand Wittgenstein’s approach. But I borrowed his writing style that was simple and clear. So my early work’s descriptions were nearly at him. But I decided that I never adopted strongly-intuitive thinking.

I always considered mathematical basis or analogy. My aim was the independence from the intuitive description. Keeping on this course, there was seen the mathematical basis that I must adopt the model in which language universals are clearly described. I entered to the mathematical description of study that was confirmed premises of my way.