Cognitivism and Nominalism in the Philosophy of Linguistics

Abstract

There are three competing frameworks for answering the foundational questions of linguistic theory. Platonism holds that linguistics is about abstract entities, whose essential properties grammarians discover, by using nonempirical reasoning, as in mathematics. Nominalism takes linguistics to be about concrete physical tokens that comprise conventional systems of communication; grammars explain how inscriptions and the like can be, e.g., grammatical, co-referential, or contradictory. Cognitivism takes linguistics to be a branch of psychology, seeing grammars as hypotheses about the tacit knowledge that every competent speaker possesses. I argue that the epistemological side of the platonist position is undermined by W. V. Quine’s attack on the notion of nonempirical modes of inquiry. Jerry Katz contends that Quine’s epistemology is inconsistent, because it entails that principles of reasoning are simultaneously revisable and unrevisable. I show that Katz’ “revisability paradox” overlooks the distinction between our principles of reasoning and our theory of those principles. Drawing this distinction eliminates the threat of inconsistency. Further, I argue that linguists’ claims concerning the infinitude of language need not signal an ontological commitment to abstract entities. Rather, they reflect the lawlike, counterfactual-supporting character of linguistic generalizations, as well as a principled idealization away from mortality, memory constraints, and motivational factors.