Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is the branch of philosophy that studies language. Its primary concerns include the nature of linguistic meaning, reference, language use, language learning and creation, language understanding, truth, thought and experience (to the extent that both are linguistic), communication, interpretation, and translation.

Miscellaneous

In 1950s, an artificial language loglan was invented that is based on first order predicate logic.

Related Topics:
Artificial language - Loglan - Predicate logic

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Important theorists

Among the most important theorists in the philosophy of language are:

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• Plato and Aristotle - classical philosophers
• Ferdinand de Saussure - founder of linguistic Structuralism
• John Stuart Mill - influential in theories of reference
• Ludwig Wittgenstein - creator of the "meaning is use" dictum
• Ernst Cassirer - theory of language as part of a general theory of symbolic forms
• Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger - philosophers tied to the Humboldtian tradition
• Valentin Voloshinov, Rossi-Landi - Marxist theoreticians of language
• Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida - Post-structuralist figures
• Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler - feminist theoreticians of language
• Mikhail Bakhtin, Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man - Theoreticians of literature whose work is of philosophical relevance
• Charles Peirce, Umberto Eco - advocates of philosophically oriented forms of semiotics
• Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Saul Kripke, Richard Montague - analytical philosophers of language rooted in logic-like analysis of language
• Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor - syntactic, computational, and knowledge-oriented perspectives
• Keith Donnellan, Jürgen Habermas, J.L. Austin, H. P. Grice, and John Searle - use-oriented theorists

Important topics and terms

• Fields of interest
• Pragmatics, Rhetoric, Semantics, Semiotics, Syntax
• Semantics of logic
• General semantics
• Symbolic interactionism
• Parts of speech
• Speaker / (or "Encoder")
• Interpreter / (or "Decoder")
• Intentionality
• Signs and Phonemes
• Tone
• Truth conditions (and / or satisfaction conditions)
• Meaning
• Ideas
• Sense and reference
• Speech acts
• Linguistic Context (see also deixis)
• Linguistic community
• Essential aspects of meaning
• Concepts
• Categories, sets, classes, and Natural kinds
• Types and tokens
• Genus and Species
• Connotation and denotation (intension and extension)
• Statements and propositions
• Subject and predicate
• Synonyms, antonyms, and all other -onyms
• Essential aspects of reference
• Entities
• Properties
• Relations
• Deixis
• Referential use
• Attributive use
• Linguistic phenomena
• Demonstratives and Indexicals
• Descriptions, esp. Definite descriptions
• Proper names
• Metaphor
• "Is" (of identity, predication, existence)
• Sentences (Commandative, Indicative, and Performative)

References

• Collins, John. (2001). http://www.sorites.org/Issue_13/collins.htm
• Gauker, Christopher. Zero Tolerance for Pragmatics. http://asweb.artsci.uc.edu/philosophy/gauker/ZeroTolerance.pdf
• Greenberg, Mark and Harman, Gilbert. (2005). Conceptual Role Semantics. http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/CRS.pdf
• Hale, B. and Crispin Wright, Ed. (1999). Blackwell Companions To Philosophy. Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers.
• Lycan, W. G. (2000). Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. New York, Routledge.
• Miller, James. (1999). http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/1999m12.1/msg00185.htm
• Mwihaki, Alice. (2004). http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/SwaFo/SF11Mwihaki.pdf
• Stainton, Robert J. (1996). Philosophical perspectives on language. Peterborough, Ont., Broadview Press.
• Tarski, Alfred. (1944). The Semantical Conception of Truth. http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html
• Glossary of Linguistic terms. http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/contents.htm