Essays on Linguistic Realism

Essays on Linguistic Realism PDF

Author: Christina Behme

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9027263949

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This book contains new articles by leading philosophers and linguists discussing a promising philosophical framework distinct from currently dominant ones: Linguistic Realism. As opposed to Nominalism and Chomskyian Conceptualism, this approach distinguishes between use of language, knowledge of language, and language as such. The latter is conceived as part of the realm of abstract objects. The authors show how adopting Linguistic Realism overcomes entrenched problems with other frameworks and suggest that Linguistic Realism will best serve those interested in formal linguistics, the cognitive dimension of natural language, and linguistic philosophy. The essays offer different perspectives on Linguistic Realism, either supporting this paradigm or taking it as a starting point for developing modified conceptions of linguistics and for further tying linguistics to the kind of formal theories of sensory cognition that were pioneered in visual perception by David Marr—whose work is predicated on exactly the object/knowledge distinction made by Linguistic Realists.

Essays Toward Realistic Syntax

Essays Toward Realistic Syntax PDF

Author: Michael K. Brame

Publisher:

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Linguistics was riven by dissension for years, and this book offers a collection of six papers by one of the better-known combatants, M. K. Brame. Two of them previously published, and one which intersects considerably with Brame's earlier criticism of transformational-generative grammar. There are essays that explore the implications of doing generative grammar without transformations; that expose the error of EQUI (short for Equivalent Noun Phrase Deletion) and the radical consequences of abandoning it. If you are interested in the battles that dominated linguistics in the latter half of the 20th century, the introduction alone is useful for charting the decline and fall of transformational grammar.

Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn

Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn PDF

Author: John P. O’Callaghan

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2016-09-15

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0268158142

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Philosophers will be richly rewarded by reading John O’Callaghan’s new book, Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn. Based on his broad knowledge of Aristotle and Aquinas, O’Callaghan provides not only an excellent treatment of Aquinas’s epistemology but also a superb demonstration of just how Aquinas might contribute to contemporary debates. Traditionally, the camps of realism and idealism fiercely engaged one another in the field of epistemology. Thomists participated in confronting idealism from their unique realist position. Post-Wittgenstein, the conflict has been dominated by a form of epistemology that grounds all knowledge in linguistic practice. Since Thomists work in a textual and historical mode, their response to the technical approach of the analytic philosophy in which most of the linguistic epistemologists write has been slow in coming. O’Callaghan expertly closes that gap by successfully bringing together these fields.

Essays in Linguistic Ontology

Essays in Linguistic Ontology PDF

Author: Jack Kaminsky

Publisher:

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13:

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"Metaphysical questions relating to what ex­ists do not seem to fade away" notes Jack Kaminsky in this book, which takes as its starting point the Quinian view that we de­termine what exists by means of the formal systems we construct to explain the world. This starting point, Kaminsky points out, is not novel; philosophers have often tried to construct formal systems, and from these systems they have been able to deduce what can be said to exist. Contemporary formal systems are different from earlier ones, how­ever, because they make more extensive use of the results of linguistics, logic, and mathe­matics studies. But these contemporary formal systems also must state eventually what their commitments to existence are, and they must be able to show their commit­ments to be free of paradox, ambiguity, and contradiction. Given these conditions, Kaminsky exam­ines the difficulties inherent in the existence claims of contemporary formal language systems. To do this he uses only a minimum of the technical elements of propositional and first-order quantificational logic. He concludes: many existential commitments are relative to the formal systems of time; some commitments seem to be absolute; and some problems--those relating to vacuous terms--arise only because no distinction is made between humanly constructed objects and naturally constructed objects.

The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics

The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics PDF

Author: Ryan M. Nefdt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-31

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1316514250

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Covering a wide range of fields and theoretical perspectives, this book provides a novel philosophical account of theoretical linguistics.

Realism and Representation

Realism and Representation PDF

Author: George Levine

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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The essays gathered here-except for the Introduction-were originally written for the conference on Realism and Representation, which took place from 10 to 12 November 1989 at Rutgers University. The volume is organized to move from direct confrontation with epistemological issues (framed in the discourse of science), to (in the middle sections) a series of attempts to think about the relations of literature and science side by side, with particular reference to questions of interpretation, epistemological authority, realism, and representation.

Essays on Realism

Essays on Realism PDF

Author: Georg Lukacs

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 1983-01

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780262620420

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Originally published in the 1930s, these essays on realism, expressionism, and modernism in literature present Lukacs's side of the controversy among Marxist writers and critics now known as the Lukacs-Brecht debate. The book also includes an exchange of letters between Lukács, writing in exile in the Soviet Union, and the German Communist novelist, Anna Seghers, in which they discuss realism, the European literary heritage, and the situation of the artist in capitalist culture.

The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language

The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language PDF

Author: Piotr Stalmaszczyk

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-12-02

Total Pages: 831

ISBN-13: 1108656226

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The philosophy of language is central to the concerns of those working across semantics, pragmatics and cognition, as well as the philosophy of mind and ideas. Bringing together an international team of leading scholars, this handbook provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary investigations into the relationship between language, philosophy, and linguistics. Chapters are grouped into thematic areas and cover a wide range of topics, from key philosophical notions, such as meaning, truth, reference, names and propositions, to characteristics of the most recent research in the field, including logicality of language, vagueness in natural language, value judgments, slurs, deception, proximization in discourse, argumentation theory and linguistic relativity. It also includes chapters that explore selected linguistic theories and their philosophical implications, providing a much-needed interdisciplinary perspective. Showcasing the cutting-edge in research in the field, this book is essential reading for philosophers interested in language and linguistics, and linguists interested in philosophical analyses.

Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism

Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism PDF

Author: Willem A. deVries

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-11-26

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0199573301

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These essays were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the lectures which became Wilfrid Sellars's 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', one of the crowning achievements of 20th century analytic philosophy. Both appreciative and critical, they engage with his treatment of crucial issues in metaphysics and epistemology.

Form and formalism in linguistics

Form and formalism in linguistics PDF

Author: James McElvenny

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 3961101825

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"Form" and "formalism" are a pair of highly productive and polysemous terms that occupy a central place in much linguistic scholarship. Diverse notions of "form" – embedded in biological, cognitive and aesthetic discourses – have been employed in accounts of language structure and relationship, while "formalism" harbours a family of senses referring to particular approaches to the study of language as well as representations of linguistic phenomena. This volume brings together a series of contributions from historians of science and philosophers of language that explore some of the key meanings and uses that these multifaceted terms and their derivatives have found in linguistics, and what these reveal about the mindset, temperament and daily practice of linguists, from the nineteenth century up to the present day.