Shringaraprakasha 8.p1.15

8.p1.15

And thus a single word would result in speaking the meanings denotable by all the words, so that linguistic transaction would take place through that alone. Nor does this occur. For when "cow" is uttered, it is not known what should be taken, because all qualities and actions are understood, yet there is no reason for conveying its own meaning colored by a specific quality and action. If it is said that the proximity of another word is the cause of restriction, even that is not distinguished from the proximity of merely its phonetic form, like the words of a recitation mantra and the like. If [it restricts] by what is denoted, then that word too, being a denoter of the connected, expects the denotation of meaning arising from another word; and from that results mutual dependence, infinite regress, or circularity. 8.13. If the second denotes its own meaning without connection, what fault did the first commit? And thus, because all words denote merely their own meaning, only the connection of denoted meanings occurs. 8.14. Moreover, in "a hundred elephant herds on the fingertip," there is no syntactic connection because of the absence of semantic fitness; but for proponents of the denotation of the connected, because of the denotation of what is connected, a syntactic connection would undesirably result even there. 8.15. Furthermore, for proponents of the denotation of the connected, the cognition arises, "This person knows that someone made it," but there is no established conclusion regarding such an objective meaning. For they say this: From the sentence, which is an effect, a prior cognition regarding that meaning belonging to the trustworthy speaker is inferred as the cause; and because that cognition does not deviate from the object of knowledge, there is ascertainment of the meaning that is the object of knowledge; thus there is no understanding of meaning through expressive power. And in this way, the expressive power itself is not determined, so whence could there be the denotation of the connected? Therefore, it is correct that there is a syntactic connection of word-meanings that have been denoted. For words cease their operation after denoting their own meaning. 8.16. Now then, the understood word-meanings make known the sentence-meaning. To this objection that, in the view of the denotation of the connected, the distinction of word-meanings is difficult to understand because of the cognition of meaning in the form of a composite mass and because the apprehension of relation is impossible due to the infinity of correlates—this is a challenge by one ignorant of linguistic convention. For convention is not of that sort.