Philosophy of Linguistics

Rey, Georges; Barber, Alex; Collins, John; Devitt, Michael; Jutronić, Dunja

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.002

Cited by 84 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Philosophical theories of words are typically situated within what Guala (2007, p. 956) calls "the Standard Model of Social Ontology" (SM) which grounds aspects of social reality in human beliefs, attitudes and intentions. One finds variations on themes associated with the standard model entering into the literature on words in Barber (2006Barber ( , 2013, Cappelen (1999), Kaplan (1990), Stainton (2014), andSzabo (1999) According to many such theories, words are socially/mentally constructed artefacts; they are (at least partly) mind-external entities which nonetheless depend constitutively for their existence on human representations.…”

Section: The Argument From Mind-dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

The case for eliminativism about words

Tasker

2022

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Words are ubiquitous and familiar, and the concept of a word features both in common-sense ways of understanding the world, and in more theoretical discourse. Nonetheless, it has been repeatedly argued that there is no such thing as words. In this paper, I will set out a range of arguments for eliminativism about words, and indicate the most promising responses. I begin by considering an eliminativist argument based on the alleged mind-dependency of words, before turning to two challenges arising from linguistic theory in the Chomskian tradition. The first of these is issued by Rey in a number of places, including in his recent book (Rey, 2020). The second is Collins’s ( 2010, 2021a) argument based on the alleged explanatory redundancy of words. I will also consider an eliminativist challenge based on the difficulty of providing existence and persistence conditions for words. One general lesson which emerges is that these eliminativist arguments, if they work at all, could be turned against a whole swathe of non-linguistic objects; in other words, the case for eliminativism about words is no stronger than the case for eliminativism about ordinary objects in general.

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Section: The Argument From Mind-dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

The case for eliminativism about words

Tasker

2022

Synthese

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“…Ideal for any course on the subject, undergraduate as well as graduate. Stainton, R. (2014). Philosophy of linguistics.…”

Section: Santanamentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching and Learning Guide for: The Philosophy of Linguistics: Scientific Underpinnings and Methodological Disputes

Nefdt

2019

Philosophy Compass

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“…Now consider why it is so heard in the usual case: it's seemingly because there is a discourse-level linguistic convention, specific to this genre. In reviews of movies, 3 For additional discussion, see Stainton (2014). The tendency to disregard phatic expressions and the like traces, we suspect, to the implicit presumption that the paradigm of language use is proto-scientific debate: "To engage in conversation is, essentially, to distinguish among alternative possible ways that things may be" (Stalnaker 1978: 184).…”

Section: A Linguistic Conventions Without Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two Questions about Interpretive Effects

Stainton¹,

Viger²

2018

Oxford Scholarship Online

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Our exposition is framed around two questions: What interpretive effects can linguistic utterances have? What causes those effects? Lepore and Stone make an empirical case that some effects are contributions to the public record of a conversation determined by linguistic conventions—following Lewis—while non-contributions (our term) produced by imagination offer no determinate content—following Davidson. They thereby replace the old semantics–pragmatics divide by eliminating conversational implicature altogether. We critique Lepore and Stone’s position on empirical grounds, presenting cases in which contributions are made non-conventionally. We also critique their view methodologically, presenting a dilemma by which they either cannot handle many cases using their framework or they do so in an ad hoc fashion. We conclude by suggesting Relevance Theory as an alternative that follows Lepore and Stone’s purported methodology and handles many of their empirical cases.

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Philosophy of Linguistics

Cited by 84 publications

References 16 publications

The case for eliminativism about words

The case for eliminativism about words

Teaching and Learning Guide for: The Philosophy of Linguistics: Scientific Underpinnings and Methodological Disputes

Two Questions about Interpretive Effects

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