Chapter 2
What kind of science is linguistics?
I argue that what determines whether a science is ‘formal’ or ‘empirical’ is not the ontological status of its objects of study, but, rather, its methodology. Since all sciences aim at generalizations, and generalizations concern types, if types are abstract (non-spatiotemporal) objects, then all sciences are concerned to discover the nature of certain abstract objects. What distinguishes empirical from formal sciences is how they study such things. If the types of a science have observable instances (‘tokens’), then the nature of the types may be determined empirically. If they types have either abstract tokens, or no tokens at all, their nature must be determined by non-empirical methods involving intuition, reasoning and proof. I conclude that the status of (theoretical) linguistics depends on the methodologies of syntax, semantics, phonology, morphology and orthography (and any other subdiscipline that is concerned with the study of the structure of language).
Article outline
- 1.The nature of formal and empirical sciences
- 2.Methodology vs. ontology
- 3.Linguistic kinds: Sentences
- 4.Discovering and investigating meaning structure
- 5.The phenomenology of meaning
- 6.Linguistics as a mixed science
-
Notes
-
References
References (6)
References
Benacerraf, Paul. 1973. Mathematical truth. The Journal of Philosophy 70: 661–679.
Katz, Jerrold J. 1996. The unfinished Chomskyan revolution. Mind and Language 11: 270–294.
Pitt, David. 2004. The phenomenology of cognition, or, What is it like to think that p? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXIX: 1–36.
Pitt, David. 2009. Intentional psychologism. Philosophical Studies 146: 117–138.
Pitt, David. 2011. Introspection, phenomenality and the availability of intentional content. In Cognitive Phenomenology, Tim Bayne & Michelle Montague (eds), 141–173. Oxford: OUP.
Soames, Scott. 2015. Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Pitt, David
2024.
The Quality of Thought,
Forker, Diana
2021.
General linguistics and the nature of human language.
Theoretical Linguistics 47:1-2
► pp. 61 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.