Language, Thought, and the Linguistics Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Relative Significance ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The Way

This chapter provides brief overviews of the role that language plays in culture and thought, of the job that linguists do to investigate the roles that language plays, and of the dispute among linguists that forms the narrative core of this book, as well as introducing the linguists who drove that dispute: Noam Chomsky, Ray Jackendoff, Robin and George Lakoff, Jim McCawley, Paul Postal, and Haj Ross. That dispute hinged on the relative significance of linguistic structure and linguistic meaning for the way we understand language and its relation to thought.

scholarly journals Merleau-Ponty: Language, sense, being

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 171-185
Author(s):  
Milomir Eric
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Invisible

In this study, the author deals with the analysis of the way in which the problem of the sense of language is set and solved in the phenomenological philosophy of M. Merleau-Ponty. At the beginning of the text, there is a link between the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure?s and Merleau-Ponty?s understanding of language. Then the attention is drawn to the understanding of language within the philosophy of existence, the problem of the relation between a mark and the marked, language and a painting, literature and painting. The final considerations are devoted to Merleau-Ponty?s attempt to establish an indirect ontology in the unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, a new understanding of the relation between flesh and language, the problem of logos, the problem of the relation of the perceptual and linguistic meaning.

scholarly journals Dialogue on Film and Philosophy

M/C Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Wilhelmsson
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Socratic Dialogue ◽  
Text Format ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
John Lennon ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Mark Johnson

Editors' Preface When Ulf Wilhelmsson first contacted us about including his "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in the M/C 'chat' issue, we were initially taken aback. True, the notion of chat surely must include that of 'dialogue', but Wilhelmsson's idea, as he put it to us, was that of a Socratic dialogue about film. The dialogue "Film och Filosofi" already existed in Swedish, but he had done an initial rough translation of the dialogue on his Website. Since Wilhelmsson put this to us in the very early days of the submission period, we decided to have a look. Wilhelmsson had omitted to mention the fact that his dialogue was amusing as well as informative. Playing Socrates was ... Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino was not just discussing film, but he was moderating a hefty grab-bag of influential philosphers, film-makers, film-scholars and the odd Beatle (John Lennon). Furthermore, creeping in to many of the utterances in the discussion was Wilhelmsson's take on Tarantino's vernacular -- keep an eye out for "Bada boom bada boom, get it?" and "Oh Sartre. Dude, I would also like to provide a similar example". The philosphers sometimes also get a chance to break out of their linguistic bonds, such as Herakleit, who tells us that "War is the primogenitor of the whole shebang". Occasionally, Wilhelmsson lets his conversants get rowdy (St Thomas of Aquinas and Aristotle yell "Tabula Rasa!" in unison), put on accents (Michel Chion with French accent: "Merci merci. Je vous en pris that you are recognising tse sound"), be "dead sure of themselves" (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; Noam Chomsky thanks us for our attention) and wander in and out of the dialogue's virtual space (at the end, Immanuel Kant returns to us after his daily walk around town). Unfortunately, due to its length, the dialogue can not be supplied in regular M/C 'bits', and so we have made it available as a downloadable Rich Text Format file. Felicity Meakins & E. Sean Rintel -- M/C 'chat' co-editors Download "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in Rich Text Format: Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php>. Chicago style: Ulf Wilhelmsson, "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. (2000) Dialogue on Film and Philosophy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]).

Squaring Pragmatism with Linguistic Meaning

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-77
Author(s):  
John Collins
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
The Third ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Way

This chapter has three major tasks. Firstly, I show how the conception of linguistic pragmatism on offer squares with certain features of standard truth-conditional approaches to meaning, especially as regards compositionality. Secondly, pace some recent semantic proposals, I argue that the properties of the Saxon genitive (e.g., Sally’s car) and adnominal adjectival attributions (e.g., red pen) are referentially open in the way I argued in the previous chapter. The third task involves sketching the kind of role I take syntax to play in fixing linguistic meaning and how the argument-adjunct distinction operates in regards to my core claims.

Linguistic Pragmatism

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
John Collins
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
What Is Said

This chapter articulates and defends linguistic pragmatism as a linguistic hypothesis that language alone underdetermines truth conditions (or what is said), and doesn’t even provide a variable licence for the truth conditions of an utterance in a context. Linguistic meaning is characterized, therefore, in terms of constraints upon what can be literally said with a linguistic structure, without the presumption that the linguistic properties of an utterance in a context will determine a content. The hypothesis is explained in terms of the resources language makes available to content, differentiated from related positions, and defended against numerous objections, especially those that argue for an essential role for minimal propositions in accounting for aspects of what is said.

The Aftermath: Twenty-First Century Linguistics

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-362
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Linguistic Models

This chapter revisits the major linguists of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute (except Noam Chomsky, who fittingly gets his own chapter): Robin Lakoff, George Lakoff, Haj Ross, Paul Postal, and Jim McCawley, noting both their contributions and their post-dispute trajectories. It also charts out two broad legacies of the Generative Semantics movement: a number of technical proposals that arose in that framework which found themselves in other formal linguistic models, prominently including those associated with Chomsky; and the general “Greening of Linguistics”: a range of functional, cognitive, and usage-based approaches whose origins trace to the Generative Semanticists’ rejection of defining Chomskyan values.

scholarly journals ‘Very Inflated Rhetoric, Polysyllables and So On’: The Public Intellectual and Jargon in the Academy

2015 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-107
Author(s):  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Online Presence ◽  
Large Sector ◽  
Computer Literate ◽  
The Way

The public intellectual, by their very definition, aims to reach a large sector of the public or publics. This requires proficiency, or at least the capacity to communicate in a variety of forms. As a large proportion of the public, to which the public intellectual appeals, is an online or cyber public, the importance of blogs in a computer-literate public cannot be under-estimated. The immediacy of the blog and the way in which an online presence facilitates immediate communication between the public and the public intellectual through the posting of comments online allow for a broad recognition of the intellectual in the public arena. My arguments will hinge on my interviews with contemporary American public intellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Todd Gitlin, Camille Paglia and Stephen Greenblatt) and their views on communication in a society experiencing a decline in the publication of print media.

Why do Philosophers and Psychologists Prefer to Ignore Each Other's Work?

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 10-20
Author(s):  
David R. Lea
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Noam Chomsky

This paper aims to clarify certain assumptions, methods and conclusions which have tended to divide philosophy and psychology. In order to demonstrate these diffenees, I have selected certain issues and developments within the philosophy of language which are relevant to behaviourism and cognitive theory. What I will demonstrate is that the assumptions, methods, and conclusions of an enquiry are often related to beliefs about the duality of the human subject. I also point out that philosophers are not unanimous about the existence of this alleged duality. Accordingly, I show that when philosophers abandon the dualistic interpretation, they also reject the idea that philosophy and psychology are fundamentally irreconcilable disciplines. In demonstrating this point, I refer to the work of Noam Chomsky on linguistic structure and cognitive capacity.

Household Strategies: The Individual, The Collectivity and The Labour Market - The Case of Married Couples

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Morris
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Household Finance ◽  
Married Couples ◽  
Relative Significance ◽  
Household Resources ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Way

Recent treatments of the household effects of economic change have tended to focus on household outcomes with reference to the use of resources of time and labour, paying scant attention to differences of power and interest within the home. It is suggested here that the most fruitful focus for the investigation of such intrahousehold divisions is the management of household finance. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, by reference to existing literature on married couples, that: (a) households constitute an amalgam of often conflicting individual interests, and that (b) some of these interests, particularly as expressed through access to and control over household resources, are closely related to experience and/or behaviour in the labour market. In doing so questions are raised about the balance between personal needs and interests, and those of the household as a collectivity, and the relative significance of both these concerns for the motivation to earn. The notion of a household strategy and the emergence of a strategy in practice should therefore take account of these different interests and the way they are acknowledged or suppressed in the organisation of household finance. In pursuing such analysis it becomes necessary to take account of how far spending obligations and orientations towards spending and consumption are fashioned or constrained by gender roles, and the way in which the emergent patterns interact with position and behaviour in the labour market.

scholarly journals The effect of pitch span on intonational plateaux

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael-Anne Knight ◽  
Francis Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Structural Variable ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
The Way

Previous research has indicated that the H (high) of a nuclear accent may be realized as a flat stretch of contour rather than as a single turning point. Both the duration of this plateau and its alignment within the accented syllable are affected by the segmental and prosodic structure of the utterance. The present work investigates whether a non-structural variable, namely pitch span, also affects the realization of the plateau. Speakers replicated all-sonorant utterances in different pitch spans. Results show that both the duration and alignment of the plateau vary with pitch span but in ways different from the way they vary with prosodic structure. Importantly, results also indicate that, when using a proportional measure of alignment, the end of the plateau is anchored within the syllable for each speaker and may be a marker of linguistic structure.

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