What is an empirical theory of linguistic meaning a theory of?

This chapter examines in depth under what conditions linguistic meaning can be the object of an empirical science. Possible answers, from the point of view of semantics, are given to questions about the proper object of theories of language structure, about what a theory of language structure explains, and about the elements a theory of language structure contains. It is shown that the only empirical observations related to semantics are utterances and human behaviours; the semantic description of a human language is thus the description of the set of constraints that words and structures of that language impose on the construction of the senses of the utterances. Some of these constraints are imposed by articulators (connectives and op-erators); others by ‘ordinary ’ words; both kinds of constraints concern the points of view which are necessary in order to build the senses of the utterances. Key-words Scientific law; explanation; scientific description; empiricity; scientific knowledge; cognition; semantics; semantic constraints; points of view; argumentation; topoi; topical field In Zygmunt Frajzyngier et al. (eds.). Di