WORDS

And other (Standard) Linguistic Entities

Organisation: Thorben Petersen (Aachen)

There is much debate about the ontology of words and other (standard) linguistic entities, with particular attention being paid to the correct categorization of linguistic entities. A venerable tradition conceives of words and sentences and the like as higher-level physical objects: something like Austin’s moderate-sized specimens of dry goods located at extended regions of space-time, or the spatiotemporal regions themselves.

We may call this view standard externalism about words. The view comes in various guises and is embraced, for instance, by structuralists (like Bloomfield and Harris), nominalist philosophers inspired by structuralism (like Goodman and Quine) and modern-day nominalists (like Michael Devitt). This workshop deals with some of the many questions arising in connection with standard externalism. 

• What does standard externalism about linguistic entities amount to? Michael Devitt  (CUNY) provides an introduction to the view (based on a chapter of his new book, Reference and Beyond).

• How can linguistic entities be higher-level physical objects, when linguistic entities are discrete entities, whereas higher-level physical objects and spatio-temporal regions are continuous? Georges Rey (Maryland) takes this problem to show that standard linguistic entities do not exist at all. On his view, they are intentional inexistents instead.

• How does the science of linguistics relate to more fundamental theories? Luca Gasparri (CNRS) argues that, in order to clarify what words are, we need to engage with language evolution and the first words ever spoken.

• How do higher-level linguistic entities relate to fundamental physical structures, as described by fundamental physical theories like GR and QFT? James Ladyman (Bristol) explains how the objects of linguistics relate to fundamental physics.

Relatedly, Barry Loewer (Rutgers) explains how the laws of linguistics relate to his package deal account, which stands on the shoulders of David Lewis’ best system account.

Georges Rey

The Innocuousness of Denying the Reality of Spoken Language

In my 2020 book „Representation of Language”, I defend a view I call “Folieism,” according to which the normal use of language involves a kind of folie à deux: speakers and hearers have such a stable, shared illusion of hearing and producing standard linguistic entities (“SLE”s such as words and phonemes) that hearers are usually able to determine precisely the SLEs speakers intended to produce, even though, for lack of appropriate segmentation in the acoustic stream, the SLEs are seldom if ever actually produced.  When Chomskyan linguists speak about SLEs, they should be construed as engaged in a “representational pretense,” avoiding endless repetitions of the word “representation” by simply pretending the contents of the representations are veridical, and so talk of SLEs as though they are real, whether or not they genuinely believe they are. This is a kind of innocuous pretense often adopted by psychologists and historians in talking about mirages, rainbows, colors, mythical beings when it’s at least unclear whether these phenomena are real.

Michael Devitt

The Linguistic Conception of Grammars

According to the linguistic conception of grammars, a language is a system of physical representations or symbols existing outside the “minds” of the organisms that produce them, and playing important causal roles in the life of those organisms. Theories of a language are theories of the properties of the symbols in virtue of which they play those causal roles. In the case of a human language, many of those properties are syntactic. A grammar is a theory of those syntactic properties.

Luca Gasparri

Evolving Words
 
This talk provides a general outline of the interest of approaching words and linguistic objects from an evolutionary angle, teasing out, in an accessible manner, what we stand to learn about linguistic reality by taking this specific approach to the ontology of words. 

Time: September 4th, 2025

Location: SR 1.003