Agency, Structure and Realism in Language and Linguistics

Linguistics and philosophy, 2002

A BibTeX-formatted bibliography of the first twenty-five years of Linguistics and Philosophy, with topic keywords, is available at www. eecs. umich. edu/∼ rthomaso/l-and-p/. Rather than attempting an overview of what has been accomplished in the pages of this journal, or ...

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.

„Energeia – Online-Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie”, Tübingen, nr. 5, 2013-2014, p. 43-56

"A language, however, does not exist as an object or an organism of nature, and thus it does not have an organic continuity independent of the consciouness of its speakers." (E. Coseriu 1983(E. Coseriu /1988.

Historiographia Linguistica, 2002

Journal of Pragmatics, 2005

Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2006

2020

Fischer, Olga and Nikolaus Ritt, eds. (1997) Target papers and commentaries prepared for the 1997 workshop on Applying Historical Linguistics held at ESSE/4 in Debrecen, Hungary, 1997

Journal for Christian Scholarship , 2006

The work of Danie Strauss has always been a celebration of systematic analysis in the reformational tradition. In this contribution, I consider how such an analysis may shed light on the nature of a specific discipline, applied linguistics. Not only is reformational philosophy able to delimit this field in a useful way, but it is also capable of illuminating historical turning points in the discipline. Both historically and philosophically, the modernist approach characteristic of first generation applied linguistics lies at one end of the discipline, and current, postmodernist perspectives at the other extreme. While modernist definitions of the field have emphasised the theoretical, scientific basis of the discipline, and postmodernist definitions identify (social and political) accountability as the critical feature of the endeavour, the discipline of applied linguistics finds a common feature in the moment of design. The argument presented is that the contributions of modernist and postmodernist approaches to applied linguistics can both be honoured in a systematic analysis. The paper concludes that a systematic explanation directs us towards a responsible agenda for applied linguistics.