A gloss about the question of the existence of „linguistic constants”. Is there an „interpretive constant” ‘you know what I mean’?

Abstract

The author is considering the possibility of an application of Pogonowski’s idea of the existence of certain linguistic counterparts of what is supposed to represent ‘logical constants’; such counterparts could be called ‘linguistic constants’. Pogonowski has pointed out a number of candidates to the status of such items; one of them is the universal exclusion of inversion as the exponent of negation (I regard the claim to this effect as very plausible).

The present author’s relevant tentative proposition raises the following genuine linguistic move as possibly materializing a ‘linguistic constant’: it consists in the non-obligatory, but sensible insertion of the phrase ‘you know what I mean’, Pol. ‘wiesz, o czym mówię’ in, practically speaking, all utterances. One example of its real use is the well known interpretation of universal quantification as limited to an arbitrary subclass of items whose whole class is officially denoted by the relevant expression currently used by the speaker. Cf., e.g., Everybody in the family knows John has left his home. where the fact that great-grandmother has no idea of the event in no way makes the utterance deviant; the speaker might well have excluded the person from the scope of ‘everybody in the family’ as used by him.

The author discusses some details of the possible functioning of the indicated phrase (you know what I mean) in the role of a ‘linguistic constant’.