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Twardowskian Semantics for Performative Utterances
Works of Twardowski in the early XX century contain an outline of general semantic framework for natural languages. This framework, proposed within Twardowski’s theory of actions and ‘products’, provides a drastic alternative to Frege’s semantic framework based on the notion of proposition (Gedanke in Frege). The latter has to a great extent shaped the following development of logical semantics. However, some recent works state that the Twardowski’s theory allows to dissolve a number of problems characteristic to proposition-based semantics. In this paper, I show that it also provides a ground for certain reconsideration of speech act theory. Since speech act theory was suggested by Austin as a fundamental alternative to standard proposition-oriented view on language, its emergence in a sense has divided philosophy of language into barely connected realms. Turn to Twardowskian semantics arguably allows to develop more consistent understanding of how language works.