Dialogue

Table of Contents - March 1967 - Volume 5, Issue 04  

Critical Notices/Études critiques

Philosophy and Linguistics

Jon Wheatleya1

a1 University of California, Santa Barbara

My task in this article is to discuss some of the recent research in linguistics and its relation, if any, to the traditional problems of philosophy. I do this in the light of two recently published books, more the first than the second. My problem is that there is so much to say, both about linguistics and about the books, that much must be left unsaid. For- instance, Chomsky has an extended discussion of the notion of innate ideas (pp. 47–59) and Katz provides a review of philosophical work in language in the last half century (pp. 15–96). I have found space for neither. I do not offer any discussion of matters internal to linguistics; that is, I do not criticize the quality of the linguistics in Chomsky's book—that belongs elsewhere and by another writer—but concern myself exclusively with the philosophical relevance of the linguistic matters.

(Online publication March 1967)