The Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) is a linguistic framework that views the purpose of linguistics as creating formal models of the rules that connect meanings to texts. Originating from computer science and machine translation, MTT provides a rich set of concepts for detailed descriptions of worldʼs languages. However, it could be enhanced through a cognitive-functional reinterpretation to better facilitate crosslinguistic comparisons and the interpretative analysis of linguistic phenomena. This paper aims to achieve this by rooting itself in American philosopher W. V. O. Quineʼs naturalism, drawing extensively on the extensive body of MTT literature, as well as on the structural linguistics tradition that the MTT is part of. By so doing, it suggests a more naturalistic re-definition of language and meaning compatible with the MTT.
Poiret Rafaël (Sat,) studied this question.