A SOPhiA WORKSHOP ON THE ONTOLOGY OF NATURAL LANGUAGE
Organized by Thorben Petersen and Ludger Jansen
Moderation: Konrad Werner
University of Salzburg
September 12, 2024, 16:00pm to 20:00pm (CET)
This workshop concerns the social foundations of language. Natural language is probably not fundamental, but ontologically dependent on various other features of the world. Amongst other things, there is reason to hold that language has a biological/neurophysiological foundation, insofar language is a capacity for producing a potentially infinite number of constructions. One could hardly deny, moreover, that language has a physical foundation, given that language requires verbal noise, marks of ink, and other concrete means of communication. Further, it would seem that language has mental foundation, and is intimately tied to freely controlled activities of individual language users. Last, but not least, there is reason to think that language furthermore rests on social features of world. But what exactly are the social foundations of language?
Which features of language are grounded in the social world? Which features of social reality are important for the foundation of language? And how is the social foundation related to the other grounds of language?
Our workshop brings together a number of philosophers of language, social ontologists and theoretical linguists to gain insights into these and related issues. The line of speakers includes:
| Time | Title |
| 16:00 | Ludger Jansen (Brixen/Rostock): Introducing the Social Ontology of Language |
| 16:30 | Thorben Petersen (Aachen): The Social Foundations of Language: A Pluralist Account |
| 17:15 | Chris Sinha (East Anglia): Language as a Biocultural Niche and Social Institution |
| 18:00 | Break |
| 18:15 | Nurbay Irmak (Bogazici): Types of Word Tokens |
| 19:00 | Brian Epstein (Tufts): The Iterated Social Construction of Words |
| 19:45 | Closing Discussion – moderated by Konrad Werner (Warsaw) |
| 20:00 | End |
Abstracts
Ludger Jansen: Institutio Instituorum: Introducing the Social Ontology of Language
Language is a crucial instrument in creating the social realm – and at the same time, it is an important part of this realm, and thus calls out for a social ontological analysis. The presentation explores the wide and diverse ground a such an ontological analysis needs to cover: from individual linguistic competences to bearer groups of languages, from abstract language systems to their concretizations in oral or written linguistic performances.
Thorben Petersen: The Social Foundations of Natural Language: A Pluralist Account
In my talk, I outline a pluralistic account concerning the social foundation of language. The account is pluralistic in various ways. For one thing, the view is pluralistic insofar there are different components of language that are founded in the social world, including the ability to generate a transfinite number of complex linguistic forms, but also various properties of linguistic tokens and the corresponding types. For another thing, the view is pluralistic insofar language founded in different elements of social reality. For example, whereas most components of language are founded on social groups, others additionally require the existence of appropriate tools. Finally, there is reason to think that the ontological relation between language its social foundation fails to be unitary.
Brian Epstein: The Iterated Social Construction of Words
This paper argues that words are not only socially constructed, but that what they are—that is, what they are constructed to be—has changed over time. To understand words (as with other socially constructed entities) it is not enough to inquire into their nature. Rather, the proposal is that we begin with a coarse-grained periodization of the development of words. At each period, then, we assess evidence for how they are to be characterized together with evidence for how they are constructed or anchored. The latter includes word-related entities from previous periods together with succeeding linguistic, social, and practical developments. This inquiry helps to understand the metaphysics of words, and also is a useful case for clarifying the iterated nature of social construction more generally.
SOPhiA 2026 