Linguistica ONLINE

This paper argues that the abstract levels which are typically recognised in linguistics -whether within phonology (e.g. the levels of distinctive features, phonemics/phonematics, and phonotactics), grammar (e.g. morphology and syntax), or 'abstract semantics' -are unnecessary. Although such levels correspond to an intuitively plausible model of natural languages, even natural languages are not fully constructed in the way these levels suggest, while other semiotic systems may be organisationally extremely different from the situation implied by these levels. In order to provide elegant (simple) and intuitively reasonable accounts of the relevant facts of language linguistic theories need to be significantly modified.

The present module presents an overview of two main approaches to the study of language current in the present day linguistics, broadly known as ‘Formal’ and ‘Functional’. We will look at the theory Language in a Semiotic Perspective (LSP) proposed in Kelkar (1997) as an instance of a theory (by a modern Indian linguist) that integrates both the approaches.

Studies in Language, 2011

Linguistic Typology, 2007

Journal of Linguistics, 1992

2018

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 127, 2010

This paper focuses on an important divide in theoretical linguistics between two broad perspectives on the structural properties of human languages, generative and functionalist. In the former, linguistic structure is explained in terms of discrete categories and highly abstract principles, which may be language-independent or language-specific and purely formal or functional in nature. In the latter, explanation for why languages have the structure that they do is found ‘outside’ language, in the general principles of human cognition and the communicative functions of language. The aim of this paper is to highlight the need for abstractness, explicitness, simplicity and theoretical economy in linguistic description and explanation. The question is not whether principles of grammar are formal or functional. The question is whether the principles that are postulated to explain linguistic structure express true generalizations.

2016

This paper develops a ‘signum ontology’, i.e. a model for coherently linking the signum (cf. sign) as an abstract entity ultimately to speech phenomena. It begins by analysing basic aspects of language: physical, meaningful and ‘word’ (i.e. in terms of word-identity), abstract and concrete (sections 2-5, 7), within a semiotic framework (Section 6). The resulting relationships between phonological, grammatical and abstract semantic entities (Section 8) allow for the incorporation of allomorph and alloseme into the model (Section 9). Having established core features of the model, I go back to the periphery, showing how maximally primitive notions (unascribed phonetic image correlate, and unascribed semantic image correlate / referent) provide a basis for coherently linking language reality (speech phenomena) to the abstractions of the model (Section 10), via a small number of serially applied basic principles, crucial among which is a set-forming criterion (Section 11). I show how the...

Final version available in: K. Allan (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 516-531, 2016

Philosophy and the study of language are intimately connected, to the extent that it is impossible to say from which point in human intellectual history the study of meaning in natural language can be regarded as an independent enterprise. Natural language syntax, semantics and pragmatics are now considered to be sub-disciplines of theoretical linguistics, surrounded by the acolytes in the domains of language acquisition, language disorders, language processing (psycholinguistics and neuroscience of language), all using empirical, including experimental, methods in addition to rationalistic inquiry. However, philosophical problems associated with the structure of language as well as with meaning in language and in discourse still remain, and arguably will always remain, the backbone of syntax and semantics, and a trigger for progress in theorizing. It is impossible to summarise the impressively rich tradition of thinking about language in the history of philosophy. One would have to start with Presocratics in the 6 th and 7 th centuries BCE in Ancient Greece (see e.g. Curd 2012) and cover two and a half millennia of intensive questioning and argumentation over the relations between language, reality, truth, and the human mind. Or, one could try to delve into the history before the Greeks, then move through the landmarks of Plato, Aristotle, and the later Stoics into the current era (see e.g. . In this brief introduction we shall focus on much later debates, starting from the period when discussions about topics that are currently in the focus of debates originated, that is late 19 th century, marked by Frege's insights into an ideal language for describing knowledge and the origin of modern logic that is now used as a metalanguage for theorizing about meaning in natural human languages. From formal approaches within analytical philosophy I shall move to the 'language-as-use' paradigm of the ordinarylanguage philosophy, followed by the more recent debates on meaning as it is to be understood for the purpose of formal representation and linguistic theory. In the process, I shall address some of the core areas that philosophers of language have been drawn to such as reference and referring or propositional attitude reports. Next, I move to the topic of the role of intentions and inferences, and finish with a brief attempt to place 'linguistics and philosophy' on the map of language sciences and research on language in the 21 st century.