The application of philosophy to language study, and language study to philosophy, has experienced demonstrable intellectual growth and diversification in recent decades. Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics comprehensively analyzes and evaluates many of the most interesting facets of this vibrant field. An edited collection of articles taken from the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, this volume acts as a single-stop desk reference resource for the field, comprising contributions from the foremost scholars of philosophy of linguistics in their various interdisciplinary specializations. From Plato's Cratylus to Semantic and Epistemic Holism, this fascinating work authoritatively unpacks the diverse and multi-layered concepts of meaning, expression, identity, truth, and countless other themes and subjects straddling the linguistic-philosophical meridian, in 175 articles and over 900 pages.
Syntactic description and theoretical syntax are central concerns in linguistics. For thirty years, the search for a single formal model of syntax has been the central task in the field; many theories have been proposed, some discarded, none universally adopted, and the problem continues to challenge linguists.The award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics included many excellent articles on all major syntactic theories, current or past, written either by their originators or by eminent practitioners. These articles are now collected here in a single volume. All have been thoroughly updated; several entirely new articles have been added, while others have been significantly revised or extended.This collection gives a full and fascinating picture of the evolution of linguists' attempts to wrestle with syntax. The comprehensive inclusion of less popular theories alongside more current ones provides the researcher with the context and perspectives necessary to appreciate why some avenues have been pursued, while others have not. This is valuable for the development both of the more generally accepted approaches, and of others now being revived or introduced.The editors' extensive introduction gives an excellent overview of the theories covered and of the issues involved, and places each article in its historical and theoretical context. The reader is supported by the inclusion of a substantial Glossary and name and subject indexes. The Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories will be an invaluable reference work, not only for those studying specific theories, but also for those with a wider interest in matters of linguistic theory.
As hopes that generative linguistics might solve philosophical problems about the mind give way to disillusionment, old problems concerning the relationship between linguistics and philosophy survive unresolved. This collection surveys the historical engagement between the two, and opens up avenues for further reflection. In Part 1 two contrasting views are presented of the interface nowadays called 'philosophy of linguistics'. Part 2 gives a detailed historical survey of the engagement of analytic philosophy with linguistic problems during the present century, and sees the imposition by philosophers of an 'exploratory' model of thinking as a major challenge to the discipline of linguistics. Part 3 poses the problem of whether linguistics is dedicated to describing independently existing linguistic structures or to imposing its own structures on linguistic phenomena. In Part 4 Harris points out some similarities in the way an eminent linguist and an eminent philosopher invoke the analogy between languages and games; while Taylor analyses the rationale of our metalinguistic claims and their relationship to linguistic theorizing. Providing a wide range of views and ideas this book will be of interest to all those interested and involved in the interface of philosophy and linguistics.
This book presents in a single volume a comprehensive history of the language sciences, from ancient times through to the twentieth century. While there has been a concentration on those traditions that have the greatest international relevance, a particular effort has been made to go beyond traditional Eurocentric accounts, and to cover a broad geographical spread. For the twentieth century a section has been devoted to the various trends, schools, and theoretical framework developed in Europe, North America and Australasia over the past seventy years. There has also been a concentration on those approaches in linguistic theory which can be expected to have some direct relevance to work being done at the beginning of the twenty-first century or those of which a knowledge is needed for the full understanding of the history of linguistic sciences through the last half of this century. The last section of this book reviews the applications of some of these findings. Based on the foundation provided by the award winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics this volume provides an excellent focal point of reference for anyone interested in the history of the language sciences.