30.1644, Review: Linguistic Theories: Behme, Neef (2018)
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Subject: 30.1644, Review: Linguistic Theories: Behme, Neef (2018)
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2019 23:00:22
From: Keith Begley [begleyk at tcd.ie]
Subject: Essays on Linguistic Realism
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-3386.html
EDITOR: Christina Behme
EDITOR: Martin Neef
TITLE: Essays on Linguistic Realism
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Language Companion Series 196
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2018
REVIEWER: Keith Begley, Trinity College Dublin
SUMMARY
The edited volume will be of interest to philosophers and linguists working on
the foundations of linguistics. It also contains material regarding some
recent technical applications of realist frameworks in semantics, phonology,
and morphology. The volume is derived from the proceedings of a workshop
convened by the editors, Christina Behme and Martin Neef, on the theme ‘The
Foundations of Linguistics: Languages as Abstract Objects’, at Technische
Universität Braunschweig, in June 2015. The editors claim that “The workshop
was the first scientific event ever that was exclusively devoted to the topic
of Linguistic Realism” (p. xi). The volume (pp. xiii + 296) consists of an
introduction by the editors and eleven chapters of varying lengths contributed
by philosophers and linguists, some of whom have been working in the field for
over fifty years.
Paul M. Postal’s chapter ‘The ontology of natural language’ is just over four
pages long, shorter than the introduction, and is an attack upon naturalism in
linguistics, both theoretically and politically. He says that the acceptance
of this view represents “a largely unquestioned overwhelmingly culturally
dominant conformism” (p. 3). He argues against Chomsky and “biolinguistics” in
this regard and points out that “essentially everything said about natural
language sentences involves taking them to be abstract objects, specifically,
various kinds of set-theoretical objects” (p. 4). Hence, he says, it is
“incoherent” to hold the view that set-theoretical entities and operations,
such as Merge and its objects, are “brain objects”. Postal misadvertises one
of his own articles calling it “Chomsky’s Ontological Admission (Postal
2012)”, given that it is posted on LingBuzz as ‘Chomsky’s Foundational
Admission’. In that article, he gives the evidence for his claim that Chomsky
admits the incoherence of his position, but he does not argue for this in the
present chapter. Referring to Professor Chomsky as a ‘laugher’, he says: “This
laugher implicitly recognizes the contradiction between claiming natural
language reality is biological, while taking sentences to be set-theoretical”
(p. 5). He compares the situation to the counterfactual one in which Frege,
exasperated by Russell’s paradox, instead opts uncritically to accept the
inconsistency. Postal ends with a stark warning that certainly sent a chill
down my spine: “[…] if you do [accept a Platonist view], I would advise being
quiet about it or you might not get a grant” (p. 5). If the reader happens to
be a grantor, be not afraid and read onward.
In David Pitt’s chapter ‘What kind of science is linguistics?’, he is
concerned “to deny that the distinction [between empirical and formal
sciences] depends upon the ontological categories of the objects of their
generalizations, since these are one and all abstract objects – types or
kinds” (p. 10). Hence, if this were the criterion, all science would be formal
science. He thinks that it must instead be the ontological category of the
tokens of these types, which determines the methodology of a science and,
hence, whether it is formal or empirical. This, he stresses, is the main claim
of his chapter. This position is somewhat like the one held by Alexander
George, which was attacked by Katz (cf. 1996, p. 282), but Pitt does not
engage with this debate except to set his position against footnoted
quotations from Katz’ article (p. 8: n. 1). Based upon his criterion, Pitt
argues that linguistics is a mixed science. Since the tokens of orthographic
and phonetic types are concrete, orthography and phonetics are empirical
departments of linguistics. Pitt identifies linguistic meanings with thought
contents to which we have direct experiential access through introspection.
Whether or not semantics is empirical, then, “depends upon the epistemic
status of introspection.” (p. 19). On this question, he leans away from taking
empirical methodology as being foundational for semantics, but he does not
provide his full argument for this position. He is even less definite
regarding syntax, but he does not think that syntactic structures are
literally instantiated by concrete tokens. Instead, he suggests that such
structures are instantiated by meanings, which are thought contents on his
view of meaning, and hence syntax is also a psychological (but non-empirical)
science.
In Robert Levine’s chapter ‘‘Biolinguistics’: Some foundational problems’, he
argues that the current ‘Biolinguistics’ paradigm is “essentially result free”
(p. 21). He attacks the “literalism” of the view, particularly of Anderson and
Lightfoot (2006), that with sufficiently advanced brain-scanning technology,
we would be able to find linguistic capability, or even the grammars
themselves, “realized as a specific set of neural structures” (p. 24). The
problem with this view, he thinks, is that neural arrays are not the kind of
thing that could “literally embody set-theoretic, algebraic, or
category-theoretic objects and mathematical relations” (p. 25). Moreover,
although he agrees with Katz and Postal that biolinguistics conceals a
“category error”, his own argument involves showing that the exemplar of
cognitive science that is often pointed to, Marr’s modelling of edge detection
in the visual system, offers no support to literalist claims, given that “by
the very nature of his achievement, Marr has adopted a strongly
anti-literalist ontology” (p. 32). That is, the mathematics of Marr’s model is
not thought of as being literally instantiated in the brain, rather, the
functions that each part of this model represents abstractly are found to be
satisfied by the actual work of various pieces of neural anatomy (p. 33).
However, no comparable models have been proposed for biolinguistic
computations. Next, Levine changes tack and addresses the doctrine of domain
specificity in linguistic cognition. Here he draws upon some of his recent
technical work in Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar (HTLCG), together
with “some support from recent work on the neurobiology of language carried
out by actual neurobiologists – what one might call real biolinguistics,
without the need for scare quotes” (p. 51). This research points instead
towards “domain generality”, presenting further “severe obstacles to the
prospect of identifying distinctively neurolinguistic structures in the human
neocortex” (p. 55).
Christina Behme’s chapter is entitled ‘The relevance of realism for language
evolution theorizing’. She begins by providing “[s]ome highlights from current
language evolution research”, particularly from investigations into animal
communication. She points out that the terms “phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics” are often used “rather loosely or metaphorically”
by researchers into animal communication (p. 66), and often in different ways,
potentially leading to misinterpretations. Especially at issue here are, of
course, the various conflated senses of the word ‘syntax’. Behme suggests that
researchers should avoid this by clearly distinguishing “their findings in
relation to human language”, and by stating “how evolutionary transitions from
one system to another could be modelled” (p. 68). Next, Behme turns to
realism. She repeats Katz’ point that for a “rational realist” (referring to a
proponent of Katz’ Realistic Rationalism (1998), with a description that she
has been using consistently for a number of years, even renaming Katz’ book to
match in another article (cf. Behme, 2014, p. 383)), intuitions of the
structure of abstracta are nonetheless corrigible. This implies that neither
naturalists nor realistic rationalists have privileged and incorrigible access
to direct evidence of the objects of their sciences. Behme suggests that
accepting the realist’s distinction between language and knowledge of language
would “allow language evolutionists to refocus their attention fully on the
cognitive capacities that are in need of an evolutionary explanation” (p. 74).
Hans-Heinrich Lieb’s chapter is the longest in the volume, spanning one fifth
of it, and is entitled ‘Describing linguistic objects in a realist way’. The
chapter covers too much to summarise fully here, including applications in
informal and formal grammar, adequacy problems, formats for axiomatic
grammars, and relating linguistics to other disciplines; so, I will keep to
the issues regarding realism. Lieb, an emeritus professor of linguistics,
refers throughout to his more than fifty years of scholarship in the field,
both “in linguistics” and “on linguistics” (p. 81). He puts forward what he
now calls ‘Modified Realism’ formerly known as ‘New Structuralism’ (Lieb,
1992), which he sees as being a “framework for linguistics”; his own approach
to fulfilling it is called “Integrational Linguistics” (p. 81). The new more
realist sounding name, he thinks, is more in line with the terminology in
related work and in the present volume. However, his realism is a Constructive
Realism rather than a Platonism, and he distinguishes their respective notions
of ‘abstract’ in the following way: “This notion of ‘abstract’ as
‘non-concrete’ differs from a Katzian conception by being relativized to a
hierarchy of ontological levels where entities on a higher level are
‘constructs’ from entities on lower levels, in a purely ontological sense […]”
(p. 83). ‘Concrete’ meaning, in general, belonging to the zero-level of the
hierarchy, except in cases where a zero-level entity is nonetheless,
surprisingly non-concrete, e.g., a number. Lieb envisages a notion of degree
of abstractness, determined not merely by level but also horizontally, as it
were, by sort and intensional character of an entity, in order to handle
differences in abstractness between entities. This seems somewhat in tension
with, if not contradictory to, his earlier definitions that he references: “x
is concrete in H iff x belongs to the zero level of H” and “x is abstract in H
iff x is not concrete in H” for a hierarchy H, which obviously do not allow
for “differences of abstractness between concrete entities” (1992, pp. 45–6).
So, it is clear that the definition of ‘abstract’ here, does not define
‘abstractness’, given that not belonging to the zero-level of H is the only
criterion employed. This seems to me to be a bit of an ontological muddle.
“Very roughly, Modified Realism blends Katz with Searle, adding a functional
perspective” (p. 83). What is taken from Katz is certainly not his notion of
‘abstract’. What is taken from Searle is his notion of intentionality.
Ryan M. Nefdt’s chapter is entitled ‘Languages and other abstract structures’,
a play on the title of a book by Katz (1981) in which ‘objects’ has been
replaced by ‘structures’. So, it is apt for the “non-eliminative structuralism
similar to that offered for mathematics by Shapiro (1997) and independently by
Resnik (1997)” (p. 167), for which he argues. He calls this foundation for
linguistics an ‘ante rem realism’, but at one point describes it as being
“Aristotelian” (p. 177), operating within a framework he calls ‘Mixed
Realism’, which is opposed to Platonism, we are told, in all but spirit. Nefdt
thinks that it is common to both Nominalism and Platonism that “linguistics is
about something outside of psychological reality.” Mixed Realism is an
“amalgamation of desiderata informed by Platonism and Nominalism” (p. 151),
especially looking to the nominalism of Devitt (2006) and his notion of
RESPECT. These three desiderata are: (1) Providing separate accounts of
creativity and ‘potential infinity’; (2) Linguistic theory is a theory of
sentence types at the appropriate level of abstraction; (3) Linguistics is the
study of NL, not of competence in NL, but the grammatical structures and
structures of competence should nonetheless RESPECT each other (p. 155). Nefdt
argues not just that infinity is not necessary for creativity,
compositionality being enough, but also that Platonism is incompatible with
creativity because it posits that maximal abstract languages exist
independently of their speakers, which entails that apparent acts of creation
are mere acts of discovery (p. 159). However, Nefdt here fails to distinguish
between type and token. On Katz’ view (1998, p. 168), one certainly discovers
a type but, in tokening it, creates a token of that type. Thus, creativity,
originality, etc., can be explained in these terms. Regarding RESPECT, Nefdt
acknowledges, Platonists are somewhat disrespectful. However, this is
unsurprising given that, for example, mathematicians generally are analogously
unconcerned with RESPECT for mathematical competence and output, and nor
should we expect them to be. Hence, this desideratum is just another way of
begging the question regarding linguistics, because RESPECT desired should not
be considered in any way RESPECT earned. Nefdt provides the following view of
linguistics (and reply to Postal’s warning): “One could either take it to be
an empirical science with formal aspects or a formal science with empirical
aspects (depending on your funding grant)” (p. 179). This is, whether an
apparently motivated one or not, a way of avoiding the question, funding or no
funding.
Martin Neef’s chapter ‘Autonomous Declarative Phonology: A realist approach to
the phonology of German’, begins by discussing in what way “Linguistics is the
scientific study of language” (p. 185). He follows both Katz (1981) and
Saussure (1916) in distinguishing three kinds of linguistic approaches, based
on a distinction between three concepts of language: ‘Language use’ (parole),
which is an empirical object; ‘knowledge of language’ (loosely related to
langage), which is a mental object; and, since knowledge is knowledge of
something, ‘language system’ (langue), which is an abstract object. The
methodology of the social sciences is apt for the empirical, that of
psychology for the mental, and that of theoretical linguistics for the
abstract. Neef notes that Chomsky made the brief of theoretical linguistics
the mental, and Harris made it the empirical, but that he follows Katz in
opting for the abstract. However, later he seems to align himself with
realists of other persuasions, so it is uncertain exactly what he takes
‘abstract’ to mean and, indeed, why it is opposed to ‘empirical’ and ‘mental’.
He also seems not to hold the same epistemic success criteria as Katz does,
taking something more like a conventionalist line: “Given that there is no
external evidence available to evaluate a theory of an abstract object, it is
ultimately the reception of the theory in the linguistic discourse that
determines its success” (p. 187). This is an epistemology neither of exactly
what, nor of how. Neef’s phonology is based on his view of linguistic realism,
and so it is autonomous from phonetics derived from language use, i.e., what
it studies is not empirical. He says that it is similar to Declarative
Phonology and Optimality Theory, but also to Lieb’s Integrational Linguistics
(p. 189). The remainder of the chapter concerns the basics of such a
phonology.
In Andreas Nolda’s chapter, ‘Explaining linguistic facts in a realist theory
of word formation’, he assumes, following Katz and Postal, that “linguistics
is an autonomous formal science” (1991, p. 515), and examines what “such a
position means for a realist word-formation theory” (p. 204). He discusses two
questions: (1) What are the true statements (‘facts’) to be described,
explained, or predicted? and (2) what linguistic objects are they about? His
answers being (1) the facts of the word-formation relations in a particular
linguistic system, and (2) that these are about abstract lexical units. 1 and
2 are discussed in terms of his “Pattern-and-Restriction Theory (PR)”. Lexical
units are understood in terms of Lieb’s “Integrational Linguistics (IL) as
abstract pairings of a paradigm and a lexical meaning” (p. 205). Again,
‘abstract’ here is Lieb’s notion of abstract, not that of Katz and Postal.
Nolda aims to show that word-formation facts “can be logically derived in PR
from lawlike sentences – theorems of the word-formation theory” and
system-specific facts, and that “such a logical derivation represents a
deductive-nomological (DN) explanation or prediction in the sense of Hempel
(1965)” (p. 205). The chapter is largely a formal one, for which Nolda
provides, in an appendix, the symbols and axiomatic formalisation of PR
employed. In DN, particular statements C1…Cn, and laws L1…Ln, together imply
an explanandum/prediction statement E, and so are seen jointly as the
explanans of E. However, it is not clear that any of the standard problems
with DN have been addressed.
Scott Soames’ chapter, entitled ‘Cognitive propositions in realist
linguistics’, in which he often refers to one of his recent books (2015),
rewards careful reading. He argues against propositions as conceived by
intensional semanticists, “[s]ince both truth and world-states are
conceptually downstream from propositions” (p. 237). He takes propositions to
be “a species of purely representational cognitive act-types o[r] operations”
(p. 241). Entertaining a proposition “is not to cognize it but to perform it”;
for example, to predicate red of o when representing o as red in thought or
perception. It is primarily agents who represent the world, propositions doing
so only derivatively (p. 239). Propositions do not “have to exist or be
entertained in order to be true” (p. 241). Propositions are not sentences,
they can be performed with or without the use of language; nor are they
spatio-temporal performance events, and so are abstract (p. 241: n. 5). For a
proposition to be the meaning of a sentence is for speakers to use the
sentence to perform it. This does not require them to have any thoughts about
the proposition or its relation to the sentence (p. 241). Soames believes that
this notion of propositions “opens up new explanatory opportunities” regarding
“cognitively distinct but representationally identical propositions” (p. 242),
such as those in the classic puzzles treated by Frege and Kripke. Soames
distinguishes between the representational semantic content and “what one who
speaks the language understands when one understands it” (p. 236). The former
cannot “be extracted from individual psychologies” and so “There is no such
thing as semantic, as opposed to communicative competence” (pp. 249–50). The
blind, or possible agents who perceive the usual colours via some other sense,
can use words with the same semantic contents as the sighted, but may
nonetheless have difficulty communicating with them for pragmatic reasons (p.
251). Soames makes the point that, in ascribing a predication to an alien
being, one does not ascribe “the fine-grained neural realisations of those
predications characteristic of normal human beings” (p. 252), even if
predication by humans were reducible to such neural realisations. Thus, as in
other realist frameworks, there is a distinction available between the
language, which is the object of a realist semantics, and “its causal origin
or its realization in particular populations of speakers.” (p. 252).
D. Terence Langendoen’s chapter, entitled ‘Languages as complete and distinct
systems of reference’, begins by providing a useful commentary upon Edward
Sapir’s article ‘The grammarian and his language’ (1924), quoting liberally
from the original. In that article, Sapir posited two principles of language:
“Formal completeness” and the “relativity of the form of thought” (‘formal
distinctness’). Formal completeness is “the capacity to satisfy every
communicative need” (p. 256). Langendoen suggests that formal completeness was
“reinterpreted” by Katz (1972) as his principle of effability. However, Katz
doesn’t mention Sapir in that regard: “the principle of effability, was, to
the best of my knowledge, first suggested by Frege”; he also says that Tarski
and Searle adopted similar principles (Katz, 1972, p. 19). In this section of
Katz’ book, Sapir is instead mentioned together with Benjamin Lee Whorf in the
context of being proponents of linguistic relativity (1972, p. 20). That is,
the view that developed from Sapir’s principle of formal distinctness, which
is, roughly, that language determines thought to some degree, through the
relativity of concepts to the forms of distinct languages. Langendoen claims
that these two principles have usually been considered separately and that
“Sapir’s unified conception of languages as formally complete but distinct
systems of reference for experience was not picked up on.” (p. 261). The
remainder of the chapter is a formal exploration of this unified conception of
language. Langendoen begins with arithmetic systems of reference that use
digit strings with distinct numeral bases to refer to a denumerably infinite
set, before moving on to systems of reference for the set of possible
experiences. For this purpose, he offers an extension of first-order logic
with a particular ordering for individuals, which is related to some earlier
work by Richard Dedekind.
Armin Burkhardt’s chapter is entitled ‘The so-called arbitrariness of
linguistic signs and Saussure’s ‘realism’’. Burkhardt distinguishes between
(as Katz might have put it) the Saussure of legendary fame, i.e., the
‘structuralist’ of the ‘Cours’ (1916), the ‘avatar’ of his disciples’
promotion, and the Saussure of the unpublished writings who “insisted on the
dynamic character of signs and the intrinsic diversity and instability of any
language with regard to its historical and geographic appearance” (p. 272).
Burkhardt points out that although the notion of arbitrariness is associated
with Saussure the avatar, the man himself must have known that it “was already
commonplace” (p. 277). Burkhardt shows that Saussure allowed for both absolute
and relative arbitrariness, the former being unmotivated and the latter being
more or less motivated. For example, onomatopoeic signs are at least somewhat
motivated by the imitation of natural sounds, etc. Some proper names also have
lexical meaning, by which they refer to properties of their referents, and in
name-giving “proper names are hardly ever characterized by absolute
arbitrariness” (p. 285). However, even these signifiers descend over time into
arbitrariness as the original motivation is forgotten. Viewed in this way,
absolute arbitrariness is merely a synchronic idealisation; the system of
signs could have been otherwise, but the system as it stands is more or less
motivated by various factors, which can be investigated both synchronically
and diachronically. In a final section, entitled ‘Saussure – A realist?’,
Burkhardt tries hard to shoehorn Saussure towards some kind of Katzian realist
position, even though the shoe doesn’t fit either of his two Saussures. This
leads to somersaults like the following one: “by calling language a ‘concrete
object,’ the Geneva’s linguist’s, as it were, light version of conceptualism
comes quite close to a realist position.” (p. 293). Further, Burkhardt’s final
conclusion seems to be that Saussure didn’t really address the question of
whether language qua object was abstract or concrete and, on some accounts,
avoided doing so (pp. 293–4).
EVALUATION
The editors explicitly situate the volume in a body of literature that
stretches back at least to Katz’ (1981) tripartite division of foundational
approaches into Nominalism, Conceptualism, and Platonism. The volume
nonetheless admits of a range of other views on the topic of linguistic
realism. There are some references made between chapters, and a number of
points of debate on specific details. However, in the context of this breadth
of perspectives, in some chapters there is a tendency for insufficient
specification and slippage of terminology. That Platonists, Structuralists,
and Constructivists are all called ‘Realists’ in some respect, or posit
‘abstract entities’, ‘types’, or ‘kinds’, in some sense, does not necessarily
indicate any deep connection between their views. These terms and distinctions
could have been handled with more care. The editors merely mention such
differences of perspective generally in their introduction, but this does very
little to assist or prepare the reader.
There would certainly seem to be unexplored avenues of research in this field.
For example, Katz’ tripartite fork might not provide all of the options
available regarding the ontological status of the objects of linguistics.
Indeed, orthogonal distinctions have been mentioned in the literature, and
some employed in chapters of the present volume. Rather than merely haranguing
Chomskyan biolinguistics with variations upon the usual categorical arguments,
further proofs of principle, applications, and debate are required from all
quarters. Where the volume succeeds in these further challenges especially,
either positively or critically, it is at its most progressive and engaging.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Stephen R. & and Lightfoot, David. 2006. Biology and Language: A
response to Everett (2005). Journal of Linguistics 42: 337–383
Behme, Christina. 2014. Assessing Direct and Indirect Evidence in Linguistic
Research. Topoi 33: 373–383
Devitt, Michael. 2006. Ignorance of Language. Oxford: OUP
Hempel, Carl G. 1965. Aspects of scientific explanation. In Aspects of
Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, Carl G.
Hempel, 331–496. New York Ny: The Free Press
Katz, Jerrold J. 1972. Semantic Theory. New York: Harper & Row
Katz, Jerrold J. 1981. Language and Other Abstract Objects. Totowa, NJ: Rowman
and Littlefield
Katz, Jerrold J. 1996. The Unfinished Chomskyan revolution. Mind & Language,
Vol. 11. No. 3, pp. 270–294
Katz, Jerrold J. 1998. Realistic Rationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The
MIT Press
Katz, Jerrold J. and Postal, Paul M. 1991. Realism vs. Conceptualism in
Linguistics Linguistics and Philosophy. Vol. 14, No. 5, pp. 515-554
Lieb, Hans-Heinrich. 1992. The case for a New Structuralism. In: Prospects for
a New Structuralism [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 96], Hans-Heinrich
Lieb (ed.), 33–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Postal, Paul M. 2012. Chomsky’s Foundational Admission. LingBuzz. Online:
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001569
Resnik, Michael. 1997. Mathematics as a Science of Patterns. Oxford: Clarendon
Press
Sapir, Edward. 1924. The grammarian and his language. American Mercury 1:
149–155. Reprinted in David G. Mandelbaum (ed.) 1963. Selected Writings of
Edward Sapir in language, Culture and Personality, 150–159. Berkeley CA:
University of California Press
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot
Shapiro, Stewart. 1997. Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology.
Oxford: OUP
Soames, Scott. 2015. Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning. Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Keith Begley is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of
Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where he currently teaches
epistemology, philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, and Heraclitus. His
current research interests are in philosophy of language and linguistics,
metaphysics, and history of philosophy, especially the work of Jerrold J. Katz
and the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus. He has papers in preparation and
forthcoming on Katz, logical atomism, explication, antonymy, and computational
philology applied to Heraclitus.
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