Pullum’s philosophy of linguistics: towards a unified framework

Abstract

Geoffrey Pullum has produced countless contributions to linguistic theory over his 50-year career in the field. Given this exceptional scientific achievement, his philosophical work often goes underappreciated. In this article, I discuss and critique three themes from Pullum’s philosophy of linguistics, namely, cardinality neutrality, model-theoretic syntax and normativity in language. I conclude by showing how these seemingly disparate elements might indeed be connected in terms of a normative constructivist approach to linguistics.