Language change

“Lexicography is concerned...”

“...the investigation of semantic change is concerned with change of meaning.”

I hadn’t noticed this before, that Quine is positioning his arguments toward the diachronic linguist. I’ve thought recently (since DIGS in Trieste (that’s ‘Diachronic something and Generative Syntax,’ the 2006 meeting), and my reading of 19th-c theory of ‘black English’ before that) that a lot of important action in the philosophy of language ought to occur in the theory of language change, but I hadn’t seen any philosophers take that up directly. Go Quine. I’m cheered.

Actually, that’s long been a sore spot of mine. Philosophers are severely handicapped because we don’t know syntax, and the syntax theory people are clumsy at generating the theory of their subject (the way a lot of scientists are) because they don’t know logic. Insofar as syntax is a kind of applied logic, this gulf between linguists and philosophers is a little bit scandalous. (Barbara Partee traces the gulf to the uber-presence of the combative winner-take-all Chomskyans in syntax, as opposed to the give-and-take semanticists and logicians, especially the Montague crowd, who had to depend on each other after his untimely death—for better or worse, no uber-presence. Interesting idea. I’ll post a link to her comments if I can find them—they’re here somewhere...)

Unfortunately, there’s much linguists will be unhappy about in this essay of Quine’s, so maybe this isn’t the place to begin the dialogue. In the first place, Quine is writing pre-Aspects and pre-Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s Verbal behavior. Rough. Worse, in his general philosophy of language he sides with the losers—the behaviorists—though I can’t remember whether that shows up in this paper. There’s a little Trent Lott waxing nostalgic about Strom Thurmond in that.

The argument of his I like best in this paper—the one about a language being a nesting of infinite sets—I would think would be a big hit among linguists. But it went over like a brick when I gave it over drinks with linguists (B and M) and philosophers (S) recently. S, the philosopher, was fine—he knew the argument already, of course—but I suspect he’s a bit weary of philosophy of language, and I’m not sure he was on the same page as me. M and B were the two linguists—both syntacticians—and they thought it was a perfect illustration of how philosophers worry about exactly the wrong thing once they set out on theorizing about language.

More when I get there. Maybe I can persuade them to weigh in.