4
Harman G (1990). ‘The intrinsic quality of experience.’ Philosophical Perspectives 4, 31–52. Hobbes T (1651/1968). Leviathan. Macpherson C B (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Jackson F (1982). ‘Epiphenomenal qualia.’ Philosophical Quarterly 32, 127–136. Koch C (2004). The quest for consciousness: a neurobio- logical approach. Denver, CO: Roberts & Co. La Mettrie J (1748/1981). L’homme-machine. Assoun P (ed.). Paris: Denoel. Lewis D (1980). ‘Mad pain and Martian pain.’ In Block N (ed.) Readings in the philosophy of psychology, vol. I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 216–222. Lewis D (1967). ‘How to define theoretical terms.’ Journal of Philosophy 67, 427–446. Long A A & Sedley D N (eds.) (1987). The Hellenistic philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lycan W (1988). Judgment and justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGinn C (1989). ‘Can we solve the mind-body problem?’ Mind 98, 349–366. Millikan R (1984). Language, thought, and other biological categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nagel T (1974). ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Philosophical Review 83, 435–450. Penrose R (1999). The emperor’s new mind: concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Putnam H (1975). Mind, language, and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle J (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scholl B & Tremoulet P (2000). ‘Perceptual causality and animacy.’ Trends in Cognitive Science 4, 299–309. Tye M (1995). Ten problems of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wellman H (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Philosophy of Science and Linguistics C Wearing, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. If linguistics is the science of language, we might begin by asking what kind of science it is. One answer, which has been given its major impetus by the work of Noam Chomsky, is that linguistics is a branch of psychology. A second answer, in some tension with the first, is that linguistics is a branch of mathematics. There are other possibilities, too: some view linguistics as a social science like anthro- pology, whereas others reject the idea that it is a science at all, taking it to be continuous with literary theory. In this article, we focus on the first two answers, as these answers have both arisen within a tradition of taking language to be a generative phenomenon (something that is built up from various component parts via rules of combination). The other possibilities, by contrast, tend to view language as considerably less systematic, amenable chiefly to the description of comparatively superficial regularities. Depending on whether one regards linguistics as psychology, then, or as mathematics, the following questions receive very different answers: What are the characteristic methods of study in linguistics and what evidence does it employ? What does linguistics aim to discover and explain? And how is linguis- tics related to other scientific domains? In what fol- lows, we examine the answers that the psychological and the mathematical positions offer to these questions. But to begin, we must examine the object of that enquiry – language – and consider what a language might be, that its study should constitute psychology or, alternatively, mathematics. The starting point of any scientific enquiry must be its object of study, because the way in which this object is conceived determines what one aims to ex- plain. In the case of linguistics, Chomsky’s work (e.g., Chomsky, 1957, 1965) brought about a sub- stantial shift in the conception of language, impor- tantly altering the goals of linguistic enquiry. During the first half of the 20th century, the predominant view conceived of language as an external object, the totality of marks and noises produced by language speakers. For structuralist linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield, linguistics was chiefly a descriptive enquiry, looking for pat- terns exhibited across the elements of the linguistic corpus. Chomsky’s proposal, by contrast, was to regard language as essentially something internal, namely, as a competence underlying the speaker/ hearer’s ability to produce and understand the sounds and marks on which the structuralist was focused. On this view, language is an internally represented (implicit) system of knowledge that an individual speaker possesses, rather than the collection of sounds or marks that she is able to understand. Her language – this knowledge of linguistic rules and structures – is what allows her to understand such (external) objects. In contrast with this position, several philosophers (Lewis, 1975; Katz, 1981; Soames, 1985; Devitt, 340 Philosophy of Mind

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Page 1: Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics || Philosophy of Science and Linguistics

Harman G (1990). ‘The intrinsic quality of experience.’Philosophical Perspectives 4, 31–52.

Hobbes T (1651/1968). Leviathan. Macpherson C B (ed.).Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Jackson F (1982). ‘Epiphenomenal qualia.’ PhilosophicalQuarterly 32, 127–136.

Koch C (2004). The quest for consciousness: a neurobio-logical approach. Denver, CO: Roberts & Co.

La Mettrie J (1748/1981). L’homme-machine. Assoun P(ed.). Paris: Denoel.

Lewis D (1980). ‘Mad pain and Martian pain.’ In Block N(ed.) Readings in the philosophy of psychology, vol. I.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 216–222.

Lewis D (1967). ‘How to define theoretical terms.’ Journalof Philosophy 67, 427–446.

Long A A & Sedley D N (eds.) (1987). The Hellenisticphilosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lycan W (1988). Judgment and justification. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

McGinn C (1989). ‘Can we solve the mind-body problem?’Mind 98, 349–366.

Millikan R (1984). Language, thought, and other biologicalcategories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nagel T (1974). ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ PhilosophicalReview 83, 435–450.

Penrose R (1999). The emperor’s new mind: concerningcomputers, minds, and the laws of physics. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Putnam H (1975). Mind, language, and reality. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Searle J (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Scholl B & Tremoulet P (2000). ‘Perceptual causality andanimacy.’ Trends in Cognitive Science 4, 299–309.

Tye M (1995). Ten problems of consciousness. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Wellman H (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

340 Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Science and Lingu

istics C Wearing, University of Western Ontario, London,

Canada

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

If linguistics is the science of language, we mightbegin by asking what kind of science it is. Oneanswer, which has been given its major impetus bythe work of Noam Chomsky, is that linguistics is abranch of psychology. A second answer, in sometension with the first, is that linguistics is a branchof mathematics. There are other possibilities, too:some view linguistics as a social science like anthro-pology, whereas others reject the idea that it is ascience at all, taking it to be continuous with literarytheory. In this article, we focus on the first twoanswers, as these answers have both arisen within atradition of taking language to be a generativephenomenon (something that is built up from variouscomponent parts via rules of combination). The otherpossibilities, by contrast, tend to view language asconsiderably less systematic, amenable chiefly to thedescription of comparatively superficial regularities.

Depending on whether one regards linguistics aspsychology, then, or as mathematics, the followingquestions receive very different answers: What are thecharacteristic methods of study in linguistics andwhat evidence does it employ? What does linguisticsaim to discover and explain? And how is linguis-tics related to other scientific domains? In what fol-lows, we examine the answers that the psychologicaland the mathematical positions offer to these

questions. But to begin, we must examine the objectof that enquiry – language – and consider what alanguage might be, that its study should constitutepsychology or, alternatively, mathematics.

The starting point of any scientific enquiry mustbe its object of study, because the way in which thisobject is conceived determines what one aims to ex-plain. In the case of linguistics, Chomsky’s work(e.g., Chomsky, 1957, 1965) brought about a sub-stantial shift in the conception of language, impor-tantly altering the goals of linguistic enquiry. Duringthe first half of the 20th century, the predominantview conceived of language as an external object,the totality of marks and noises produced by languagespeakers. For structuralist linguists such as Ferdinandde Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield, linguisticswas chiefly a descriptive enquiry, looking for pat-terns exhibited across the elements of the linguisticcorpus. Chomsky’s proposal, by contrast, was toregard language as essentially something internal,namely, as a competence underlying the speaker/hearer’s ability to produce and understand the soundsand marks on which the structuralist was focused.On this view, language is an internally represented(implicit) system of knowledge that an individualspeaker possesses, rather than the collection ofsounds or marks that she is able to understand. Herlanguage – this knowledge of linguistic rules andstructures – is what allows her to understand such(external) objects.

In contrast with this position, several philosophers(Lewis, 1975; Katz, 1981; Soames, 1985; Devitt,

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Philosophy of Science and Linguistics 341

2003) have argued that this sort of internalist view oflanguage is mistaken – that the structuralists were notwrong to view language as external – at least when itcomes to doing linguistics. Unlike the structuralists,however, they treat languages as abstract externalobjects, namely, collections of sentences akin to thelanguages of formal logic. From this point of view,Urdu and Hungarian are on a par with the languageof first-order logic: they are abstract formal systemsgoverned by recursive grammatical rules and posses-sing canonical interpretations that assign meaningsto their sentences. But regarded as such, languagesare purely mathematical objects; psychology is notrelevant to describing the properties of such entities.

For the proponent of the mathematical view, then,linguistics is an investigation of the grammatical andother structural features of languages, conceived of asabstract collections of sentences. It is, of course, com-patible with this view that speakers know a grammarthat allows them to understand and use the languagethey speak, and psychology (specifically, psycholin-guistics) may tell us about the linguistic abilities ofspeakers and hearers. But on this view, psycholinguis-tics and linguistics are distinct enterprises: the formerstudies human psychology, whereas the latter studiesabstract mathematical entities that are importantlyindependent of human psychology.

Thus, the goal of the mathematical linguist is toexhibit a grammar for the language being studied.As a matter of mathematical fact, there will be in-definitely many equivalent grammars for any givenlanguage, so to the extent that a language is consid-ered in abstraction from any psychological basis itmight have, there is no particular requirement thatthe linguist seek the grammar that the speakers ofthe language actually know. In a similar way, thereis no reason to seek a grammar that is sensitive toregularities exhibited across multiple languages. Anygrammar that is descriptively adequate, i.e., thatgenerates all and only the grammatical sentences ofthe language in question, satisfies the goal of themathematical linguist.

The principal evidence available for this undertak-ing consists in the judgments of native speakers aboutthe acceptability of sample sentences: are the sen-tences well formed? Are they meaningful or senseless?To borrow some well-known examples, Englishspeakers judge that sentence (1) is an acceptable sen-tence of their language but (2) is not. Sentences (3)and (4) are both structurally (grammatically) accept-able, but they have notable meaning-related features.Sentence (3) has two distinct interpretations, whereas(4) arguably lacks any coherent interpretation:

(1)

The cat scratched the child.

(2)

*Cat the child the scratched. (3) Everyone loves someone. (4) ? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Such intuitions about the well-formedness andmeaningfulness of sentences allow the linguist bothto identify the class of sentences that belong to thelanguage, i.e., the set of sentences for which a gram-mar must be found, and to pinpoint the grammaticaland semantic features of those sentences.

Like the mathematical view, the psychologicalview of language takes native speaker intuitions as acentral source of evidence. However, what these intui-tions are evidence for is conceived somewhat differ-ently. Recall that the Chomskyan linguist’s goal is touncover the rules and structures that constitute aspeaker/hearer’s actual knowledge of language. So,like the mathematical linguist, the Chomskyan lin-guist aims to discover a grammar for a given language,but this grammar must meet an additional constraint:it is supposed to be the grammar that speakers of thelanguage actually know. The Chomskyan linguistseeks a grammar that is not merely descriptively ade-quate, but also explanatorily adequate, i.e., a gram-mar that speakers of the language could plausiblyhave learned, given their innate psychological endow-ment and the variety of their experiences.

To achieve the demand of explanatory adequa-cy, the Chomskyan linguist adopts two specifichypotheses about linguistic competence. First, alanguage-specific mental faculty is postulated,consisting of mechanisms that are dedicated to lan-guage production and comprehension. (Contrast thishypothesis with the view that language productionand comprehension operate via the same mechanismsused for other cognitive tasks, such as contemplatinga work of art or planning a trip.) The second hypoth-esis is that the language faculty of each child begins ina default state that contains a considerable amount ofinnate knowledge (called ‘Universal Grammar’).(Contrast this hypothesis with the view that thechild approaches language learning as a ‘blankslate’.) From this state, the child is capable of learningany natural language and is ‘trained’ by experience toachieve a steady state that allows him or her to speaka specific language. This steady state is the maturespeaker’s linguistic competence.

With these hypotheses in place, the Chomskyanlinguist’s task is to describe both the starting state ofthe language faculty (i.e., the Universal Grammar)and the stable states of the language faculties of ma-ture speakers of the various human languages. To thisend, speaker/hearer intuitions constitute a vitalsource of evidence. Thinking about why specific con-structions are not permissible has proved particularlyrevealing of the contours of linguistic constraints.

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342 Philosophy of Science and Linguistics

Furthermore, cross-linguistic evidence has been in-valuable for showing how patterns that look ad hocin one language reflect regularities that hold acrossmultiple languages.

At the same time, evidence going well beyondspeaker/hearer intuitions has proven useful. Evidenceabout how language is acquired (when and in whatorder children use various constructions, as well asabout the constructions children do not make) helpsto clarify what sorts of rules children might be comingto know about their language. For example, considerthe formation of questions. A rule that relies on wordorder, such as ‘move the first verb to the front of thesentence’, will not work (it’s fine for ‘you are happy’,but it won’t work for ‘the woman who is walking herdog is happy’). Instead, the child must learn a rulethat manipulates the underlying grammatical struc-ture of the sentence in order to form questions cor-rectly. And, in fact, it is observed that children do notmake the errors that would suggest they are everfollowing the incorrect (word order-based) rule.

In a similar way, experimental work on ordinarylanguage use and clinical investigations into linguisticpathologies (impairments to the ability to use or un-derstand language that result from illness or injury)are becoming increasingly helpful for testing linguistichypotheses. For example, recent work trackinghearers’ eye movements has sought to illuminatesuch topics as the fixing of the referents of pro-nouns (e.g., Runner et al., 2003). The idea here isthat knowing where hearers look – which charactersdraw their eye while hearing sentences about them –provides a new window onto the syntactic hypotheses(in this case, the Binding Theory) about what pronounreferents can and cannot be. The goal is to flesh out theinformation gleaned from native speaker intuitions,bringing linguistic theories more closely in line withpsychological hypotheses about mental processing.

The full integration of linguistics with psychologystill lies some distance in the future. Nonetheless, theChomskyan approach already imposes substantialconstraints on more general psychological explana-tions. In particular, specifically language-dedicatedprocesses must constitute part of the overall psycho-logical account of the mind and the innate capacitiesattributed to the language faculty must eventuallyfind explanation within the domain of evolutionarybiology. At the same time, of course, linguistic theo-ries are themselves responsible to the constraints im-posed by psychology and related fields. In principle,evidence from any quarter might prove relevant, al-though psychology, computational modeling, andneuroscience seem the most likely resources.

Where does this leave the mathematical and psy-chological views of linguistics? As mentioned above,

they are certainly ‘compatible’ as long as one main-tains that the latter is not really linguistics. From sucha perspective, the constraints and goals of the psycho-logical view are simply irrelevant to the pursuit oflinguistics proper. However, there is a difficulty withmaintaining such a strict separation of linguistics andpsychology; namely, it requires that we be able todistinguish between linguistic facts and psychologicalfacts. If linguistics is quite distinct from psychology,then it must be possible to delineate the mathematicallinguist’s abstract collection of sentences in a princi-pled way that does not depend on psychological facts.But it is not clear that this is possible. Insofar asthe mathematical linguist relies on speaker/hearerintuitions to decide which sentences belong to thelanguage, there is an irreducible element of idealiza-tion involved in determining which intuitions countas data. Moreover, there are a range of other factsabout the use of language (certain expressions arepolite, whereas others are not; certain hand gestureshave conventional meanings; poetry often employswords in unusual ways) and it is not clear what prin-ciples might allow the mathematical view to identifywhich (if any) of these facts are among the linguisticones (see Fodor, 1981 and Antony, 2003 for discus-sion). As a result, the mathematical view risks relyingon mere stipulation, whereas the psychological viewis able to identify the linguistic facts through empiri-cal investigation as those facts that are explained bythe functioning of the language faculty.

This sharp distinction between the mathematicaland psychological views is not mandatory, however.One can individuate some of the mathematicalview’s languages (i.e., its abstract sets of sentences)precisely by reference to the linguistic competenceof (idealized) native speakers in specific linguisticcommunities: a certain abstract language L is thelanguage spoken by speaker S in virtue of S’s linguisticcompetence. In this way, the powerful logical andmodel-theoretic tools of the mathematical linguistcan be brought to bear on language L in some inde-pendence from the considerations of the psychologi-cal view. Difficult questions remain about the extentto which a grammar produced in this way needs tocohere with results from psychological and other em-pirical research. But viewing the mathematical andpsychological views as connected to this extent allowsthe science of linguistics to proceed in multiple direc-tions at once, unconstrained by a priori restrictionson either its methods or its evidence.

See also: Chart Parsing and Well-Formed Substring

Tables; Chomsky, Noam (b. 1928); Data and Evidence;

E-Language versus I-Language; Language as an Ob-

ject of Study; Linguistics as a Science.

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Phoenician 343

Bibliography

Antony L (2003). ‘Rabbit-pots and supernova: On the rele-vance of psychological data to linguistic theory.’ InBarber A (ed.) Epistemology of language. Oxford:Oxford University Press. 47–68.

Antony L & Hornstein N (2003). Chomsky and his critics.Oxford: Blackwell.

Barber A (2003). Epistemology of language. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Chomsky N (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague:Mouton and Co.

Chomsky N (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky N (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature,origin, and use. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Chomsky N (2000). New horizons in the study of languageand mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Devitt M (2003). ‘Linguistics is not psychology.’ In BarberA (ed.) Epistemology of language. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. 107–139.

Devitt M & Sterelny K (1989). ‘Linguistics: What’s wrongwith ‘‘the right view.’’ ’ Philosophical Perspectives 3,497–531.

PhoenicianJ A Hackett, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Phoenician is a member of the Canaanite branch ofthe Northwest Semitic languages, closely related toHebrew, Moabite, Ammonite, and Edomite. Phoeni-cian was spoken both in the Levantine homeland andin the widespread Mediterranean colonies of thePhoenician commercial empire. Phoenicia itself isgenerally defined as the 60-mile long and 30-milewide land area, from Acco to Tell Sukas south tonorth, and from the Mediterranean to the LebanonMountains, west to east (that is, the coast of modernLebanon and part of the coast of modern Israel). It isscholarly convention to refer to this strip of land asPhoenicia after ca. 1200 B.C., the beginning of the IronAge in the Levant. The ‘Sea Peoples’ (e.g., the Philis-tines) had forced the withdrawal of Egypt from an-cient Canaan and had taken over the southern coastalregion from them. The Sea Peoples do not seem tohave carried their war to the northern coastal region,however, and so once the area was free of Egyptiancontrol, the northern coastal cities became autono-mous. They were never a single political entity, ‘Phoe-nicia,’ but rather a group of individual cities,although at any given time, one city was generally

Fodor J A (1981). ‘Some notes on what linguistics is about.’In Block N (ed.) Readings in the philosophy of psychol-ogy, vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.197–207.

Katz J (1981). Language and other abstract objects.Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

Laurence S (2003). ‘Is linguistics a branch of psychology?’In Barber A (ed.) Epistemology of language. Oxford:Oxford University Press. 69–106.

Laurence S & Margolis E (2001). ‘The poverty of thestimulus argument.’ British Journal for the Philosophyof Science 52, 217–276.

Lewis D (1975). ‘Languages and language.’ In Lewis D (ed.)Philosophical papers, vol. I. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. 163–188.

Runner J T, Sussman R S & Tanenhaus M K (2003).‘Assignment of reference to reflexives and pronouns inpicture noun phrases: Evidence from eye movements.’Cognition 81(1), B1–B13.

Soames S (1985). ‘Semantics and psychology.’ In Katz J(ed.) The philosophy of linguistics. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. 204–226.

dominant over the others. The ancient Phoeniciancities include Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Beirut, Sarepta,and Arwad. The people of Phoenicia called them-selves Canaanites or referred to themselves as thecitizens of their particular city.

Again, by scholarly convention, we refer to thelanguage of the inscriptions found in the cities alongthis coastal strip as ‘Phoenician’ from ca. 1200 B.C.

onward, although the first inscriptions of any lengthunearthed so far date to ca. 1000. In fact, 10th-centuryByblian inscriptions are written in a dialect slightlydifferent from the Standard Phoenician of the rest ofthese inscriptions, but they are recognizably Phoeni-cian all the same. 12th–11th century inscriptions thatmight also represent writing by Phoenicians are frag-mentary or have not been found in situ, so that classi-fication is difficult and dating must be paleographic:bronze arrowheads, for instance, probably from theBeqac Valley between the Lebanon and Antilebanonmountains, that are inscribed with personal names;inscribed clay cones from Byblos, also bearing per-sonal names; the Nora fragment with parts of fourwords, written boustrephedon.

The alphabet and language of Phoenician inscrip-tions were the subject of scholarly debate already inthe 18th century; by mid-century, both language andalphabet were reasonably well deciphered. The texts