The main goal of this article is to characterise and compare some aspects of Hilary Putnam’s referential theory of meaning and Robert B. Brandom’s inferential theory of meaning. I will do it to indicate some similarities and differences in these theories. It will provide an opportunity for a deeper understanding of these theories and for a more adequate evaluation of how they describe and explain the process of meaning acquisition of linguistic expressions.

In his theory of meaning Putnam emphasises the importance of reference understood as a relationship which connects linguistic expressions and extra-linguistic (empirical) reality. Brandom acknowledges inference as a main category useful in characterising the meaning of expressions used in premises and a conclusion of inference. But his theory of meaning is criticised for minimalising the role of an empirical component (demonstratives etc.). He tries to defend his standpoint in the anaphoric theory of reference.

Putnam like Brandom claimed that we – as cognitive subjects – are not in a situation in which we learn about the extra-linguistic reality in a direct way. It is the reality itself as well as our cognitive apparatus that play a role in a cognitive process.

The purpose of this paper is an attempt to reflect on the beginnings of Ukrainian modernism. The article is an analysis of the “Open letter to Ukrainian writers” by Mykola Voronyi and his polemics with a well-known Ukrainian writer, Ivan Franko. This letter, which was published in the journal “Literaturno-Naukowy Wisnyk” in 1901, is a very important document of the epoch, bearing the mark of a literary manifesto. This little note made the Ukrainian intelligentsia aware of the crisis of so-called narodnytstvo poetics and the need for far-reaching modernization of Ukrainian literature. The writer postulated the rejection of adopted schemes in favour of the latest European trends in literature. The attempt to implement the program demands was an edition of Mykola Voronyi’s literary collection, “From the Valleys and Above the Clouds”, which has also been analyzed and discussed in this paper. The author concludes that the “Open letter to Ukrainian writers” can be considered one of the first manifestations of Ukrainian modernism