Assertions are acts of meaning, and assertions in the sense of a formulated proposition are only specific forms of expressness, where expressness has the sense of expressing lived experiences or comportments through meaning. It is essentially owing to phenomenological investigations that this authentic sense of the expressing and expressedness of all comportments was made fundamental and placed in the foreground of the question of the structure of the logical. This is not surprising when we consider that our comportments are in actual fact pervaded through and through by assertions, that they are always performed in some form of expressness. It is also a matter of fact that our simplest perceptions and constitutive states are already expressed, even more, are interpreted in a certain way. What is primary and original here? It is not so much that we see the objects and things but rather that we first talk about them. To put it more precisely: we do not say what we see, but rather the reverse, we see what one says about the matter. This inherently determinate character of the world and its potential apprehension and comprehension through expressness, through already having been spoken and talked over, is basically what must now be brought out in the question of the structure of categorial intuition.
α) Expression of perceptions
The question now is how we can call an assertion true when we make it within a concrete perception. Can the assertion which I make in a concrete and actual perception be fulfilled in the same way that an empty intention corresponding to the concrete perception is fulfilled?
Let us formulate this sort of case in ordinary language: I give expression to my perception with the assertion "This chair is yellow and upholstered." What are we to understand here by expression? There are two possibilities. First, to give expression to a perception can mean to give notice or to announce, announcement of the act of perceiving, announcing that I am now performing it. I communicate that I am now having this perception. This possibility of announcing acts exists not only for perceiving but for any act. There are announcements which confirm the performance of perceiving, representing, judging, wishing, expecting, and the like. When I say to you "I hope you'll take care of that," this implies that I expect you to take care of it. Among other things here it is a matter of communicating to the other that I expect something from him. Or when I say "I wish that ... ," I give expression to the wish, I announce that I am animated by this wish. Giving expression in this first sense is therefore announcing the presence of an act, my being animated by it. To give expression to a perception then means something like the following: I now communicate that I hear the sound of a car below.