Cross-linguistic categories - what are they?

[Esa Itkonen]

Dear Funknetters: A debate has been going on in recent years concerning the nature of cross-linguistic categories. Are they universally valid psychologically real entities or (nothing but) useful fictions? I think there is room for a third alternative, namely one that exemplifies - to use a very refined expression - "coherentist inductivism" à la Nicholas Rescher. This "third alternative" is expounded more fully on my homepage, in the article 'Concerning the role of induction in typological linguistics', which is at the moment the latest entry in the list "available as full texts". This is the written version of a talk that will be given at the 4th Language - Culture - Mind conference, to be held in Turku (Finland), June 21-23, 2010. 

Esa

Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen