This volume presents significant developments in the field of Montague Grammar and outlines its past and future contributions to philosophy and linguistics. The contents are as follows: Introduction by Steven Davis and Marianne Mithun Emmon Bach, "Montague Grammar and Classical Transformational Grammar" Barbara H. Partee, "Constraining Transformational Montague Grammar: A Framework and a Fragment" James D. McCawley, "Helpful Hints to the Ordinary Working Montague Grammarian" Terence Parsons, "Type Theory and Ordinary Language" David R. Dowty, "Dative 'Movement' and Thomason's Extensions (...) of Montague Grammar" Muffy E. A. Siegel, "Measure Adjectives in Montague Grammar" Michael Bennett, "Mass Nouns and Mass Terms in Montague Grammar" Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof, "Infinitives and Context in Montague Grammar" James Waldo, "A PTQ Semantics for Sortal Incorrectness". (shrink)

In a seminal modern work of uṣūl al-fiqh, al-Ākhund al-Khurāsānī argues that the two terms ṭalab and irāda are coined to refer to a single concept. Within the argument he implies that the Ashʿarīs, and some modern Twelver Shīʿa who lean towards their position, fall foul of a linguistic fallacy when they assert that ṭalab and irāda are distinct. For al-Khurāsānī, both ṭalab and irāda may be used in two distinct modes, a real mode or an initiating mode. The (...) former denotes a real seeking or willing within the essence of an actor, whereas the latter simply seeks to initiate the meaning of seeking or willing. Accordingly, an initiating ṭalab may be distinct from a real irāda, and a real ṭalab may be distinct from an initiating irāda, without undermining the position that ṭalab and irāda are conceptually identical. Analysis of al-Khurāsānī’s arguments, and some criticisms of it by later modern and contemporary scholars of uṣūl al-fiqh, will aim to broaden our understanding of the category of inshāʾ in Arabic, hitherto analysed through the lens of J. L. Austin’s notion of performatives. More generally, the paper takes the treatment of this linguistic issue as an example affirming the continued importance of modern and contemporary uṣūl al-fiqh for engaging with Arabic philosophy of language and argument. (shrink)

In this study Friedrich Waismann gives a systematic presentation of insights into philosophical problems which can be achieved by clarifying the language in which the problems are posed. Much of the material and the method itself derive from Wittgenstein's work in the early 30s. The book was originally envisaged as a lucid and well organized account of Wittgenstein's distinctive form of linguistic philosophy to enable the Vienna Circle to incorporate these valuable methods into their own programme of analysis. (...) The project evolved over many years into a wide-ranging survey of the dissolution of many philosophical problems and the construction of a systematic philosophical grammar. Waismann shows in detail how puzzlement can be removed by careful description of the uses of the terms employed in framing problems. At the same time, he sketches a general framework for analysis of language, including chapters on names, general terms, logical operators, propositions, questions, etc. This book is an authoritative presentation of Wittgenstein's influential philosophy of language in a format much easier to follow than his own intricate and elusive texts. Waismann exhibits clearly the merits of this method of philosophizing. This book should serve as an important and useful text for those who wish to understand the method and power of linguistic philosophy. It has no equal as an introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of those (...) questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling. (shrink)

Because it focuses on the general usage of terms, the ordinary language approach to African philosophy has sometimes been labeled a form of ethnophilosophy in that it simply records or describes meanings in the way ethnographers describe cultures. That misses the point that linguistic philosophy in general has to be concerned with terminology that is shared and is able to do it in ways that are philosophically valuable.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Explores the role language plays in the relationship between reality and utterance.

This book provides an original and provocative combination of ethnomethodological analysis and the concepts of linguistic philosophy with a breadth and clarity unusual in this field of writing. It is designed to be read by sociologists, psychologists and philosophers and concerns itself with the contributions of Wittgenstein, defending the claim for his relevance to the human sciences. However, this book goes some way beyond the usual limitations of such interdisciplinary works by outlining some empirical applications of ideas derived (...) from the Wittgenstein tradition. (shrink)

Like so many sciences, linguistics originated from philosophy's rib. It reached maturity and attained full independence only in the twentieth century (for example, it is a well-known fact that the first linguistics department in the UK was founded in 1944); though research which we would now classify as linguistic (especially leading to generalizations from comparing different languages) was certainly carried out much earlier. The relationship between philosophy and linguistics is perhaps reminiscent of that between an old-fashioned mother (...) and her emancipated daughter, and is certainly asymmetric. And though from philosophy's rib, empirical investigation methods have ensured that linguistics has evolved (just as in the case of the more famous rib) into something far from resembling the original piece of bone. Another side of the same asymmetry is that while linguistics focuses exclusively on language (or languages), for philosophy language seems less pervasive - philosophy of language being merely one branch among many. However, during the twentieth century this asymmetry was substantially diminished by the so called linguistic turn1, undergone by numerous philosophers – this turn was due to the realization that as language is the universal medium for our grasping and coping with the world, its study may provide the very key for all other philosophical disciplines. As for the working methods, we could perhaps picture the difference between a philosopher of language and a linguist by means of the following simile. Imagine two researchers both asked to investigate an unknown landscape. One hires a helicopter, acquires a birds-eye view of the whole landscape and draws a rough, but comprehensive map. The other takes a camera, a writing pad and various instruments, and walks around, taking pictures and making notes of the kinds of rocks, plants and animals which he finds. Whose way is the more reasonable? Well, one wants to say, neither, for they seem to be complementary.. (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular (...) phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns.The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns. (shrink)

"Professor Mundle's authoritative and acclaimed critique of a way of thinking which still shapes the style of Anglo-Saxon philosophy is here presented in a revised text with a new postscript. Mundle shows how Austin, Ryle and Wittgenstein, among others, not only committed grammatical and logical errors akin to those they themselves detected in others, but misunderstood the relatoins between grammar and philosphy. Professor P.L. Heath contributes a new foreword, and Mundle himself answers his opponents in a subtly provocative manner." (...) --. (shrink)

Those who believe that linguistic philosophy has no principles are not likely to have their opinion dispelled by Waismann's book. The book, written prior to World War II, withdrawn from the publisher and constantly modified thereafter, does not attempt to present a set of philosophical or metaphilosophical principles. What it does present is a method, applied both to traditional philosophical problems and to the central themes of linguistic philosophy. If the method has a principle, it is (...) to be found in the concept of a grammatical rule. Philosophical questions are clarified by appeal to rules of grammar, beyond which there can be no appeal. Principles was written as a textbook, and could be quite useful as such since all the important issues of analytic philosophy are raised. Despite the obvious influence of Wittgenstein, the treatment of the issues, the linguistic philosophy presented, is Waismann's own unique blend. The blend is interesting and often fruitful.—A. E. J. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1963 provides a sample of the criticisms of philosophers on the course of linguistic philosophy. A chronological ordr is followed, with work ranging from that of traditionalist thinkers to second thoughts about linguistic philosophy on the part of writers who have been influenced by the movement.

Volume of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. Keith Brown.