Table Of Content
Essays on
Linguistic Realism
Edited by
Christina Behme
Martin Neef
Essays on Linguistic Realism
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
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University of California, Santa Barbara University of Munich
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Volume 196
Essays on Linguistic Realism
Edited by Christina Behme and Martin Neef
Essays on Linguistic Realism
Edited by
Christina Behme
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Martin Neef
TU Braunschweig
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/slcs.196
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
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isbn 978 90 272 0092 1 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6394 0 (e-book)
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Table of contents
Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism vii
Christina Behme & Martin Neef
chapter 1
The ontology of natural language 1
Paul M. Postal
chapter 2
What kind of science is linguistics? 7
David Pitt
chapter 3
‘Biolinguistics’:Some foundational problems 21
Robert Levine
chapter 4
The relevance of realism for language evolution theorizing 61
Christina Behme
chapter 5
Describing linguistic objects in a realist way 79
Hans-Heinrich Lieb
chapter 6
Languages and other abstract structures 139
Ryan M. Nefdt
chapter 7
Autonomous Declarative Phonology:A realist approach to the phonology
of German 185
Martin Neef
chapter 8
Explaining linguistic facts in a realist theory of word formation 203
Andreas Nolda
chapter 9
Cognitive propositions in realist linguistics 235
Scott Soames
vi Essays on Linguistic Realism
chapter 10
Languages as complete and distinct systems of reference 255
D. Terence Langendoen
chapter 11
The so-called arbitrariness of linguistic signs and Saussure’s ‘realism’ 271
Armin Burkhardt
Index 297
Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism
Christina Behme & Martin Neef
Kwantlen Polytechnic University / TU Braunschweig
1. Three kinds of linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Agreement about the nature of
linguistics may not go much further than to a statement of this kind. Not only
is the set of methods linguists use to study language multifaceted; even the
question what language actually is has received a number of different answers.
In his 1981 book Language and other abstract objects, philosopher Jerrold J.
Katz provided a typology regarding different views of the nature of language.
In the history of linguistics, he identified three distinct approaches that he
labeled – with reference to the problem of universals exhaustively discussed
in antiquity and medieval times – nominalism, conceptualism, and realism. In
different times and different frameworks, linguists have assumed that language
is a set of physical facts (nominalism), an aspect of the human mind or brain
(conceptualism), or an abstract object (realism). In the past 60 years, concep-
tualism has been the dominant paradigm, particularly the form based on the
work of Noam Chomsky (e.g. Chomsky 1959, 1966, 1975, 1986, 2000, 2012).
Nominalism is a paradigm that always had a number of defenders during this
period. Realism, on the other hand, has received scant attention in linguistics
in the period under discussion. For that reason, realism is unfamiliar to many
linguists and philosophers and remains profoundly underdeveloped. Katz has
devoted a number of books and articles to the topic of Linguistic Realism (Katz
1985, 1990, 1996, 1998, 2004). From the linguistic side, it was particularly Paul
M. Postal who defended and further developed this paradigm (e.g., Postal 2003,
2004, 2009, 2012).
According to Katz and Postal (1991), most traditional areas of linguistic
research can be subsumed under the realist framework:
Realist linguistics requires not a new field, but merely a different interpretation of
an existing one. What could remain and what would have to be eliminated require
specification, but most of what generative linguistics takes to be syntax, seman-
tics, phonology, etc., could be preserved. (Katz & Postal 1991: 531)
doi 10.1075/slcs.196.001beh
© 2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company
viii Christina Behme & Martin Neef
Because Linguistic Realism is the least explored linguistic paradigm, much
discussion regarding the ontology of linguistics remains incomplete. Therefore,
this collection of papers is an urgently needed first step towards filling this lacuna.
Of course, supporters of Linguistic Realism do not argue in favor of this paradigm
because it has not received more attention in the past. Realist linguists are con-
vinced that this paradigm is superior to the other paradigms. Their argumentation
can be summarized as follows:
In the empirical world, we can observe that people behave in a certain way that
we interpret as using language. If people have the ability to use language, they must
have knowledge of language. In other words, knowledge of language is a require-
ment for using language. This insight was (according to Katz 1981) Chomsky’s
motivation for replacing the dominant framework of the 1950s (nominalism) with
a novel framework (conceptualism). Chomsky provided extensive arguments that
convinced many linguists and philosophers that conceptualism was the superior
framework. However, Katz and Postal reasoned that if it is the case that people
have knowledge of language, then the object known must have a different onto-
logical status than the knowledge of it (e.g. Katz & Postal 1991). What kind of an
object language is and how it can be known and be made use of, is what Linguistic
Realism is focused on. According to this paradigm, language is an abstract object
comparable to the objects of mathematics and logics, for example. Studying lan-
guage as an abstract object means reconstructing language as an abstract system
by giving an explicit model of a particular language.
If language is neither an empirical nor a mental object, this does not mean
that linguists should not study any empirical or mental objects. On the contrary,
both the use of language and the knowledge of language are important topics in
linguistics. These topics are part of a comprehensive study of linguistics. But study-
ing the use people make of linguistic objects is not studying language. It is studying
language use (or performance in Chomsky’s terms). Similarly, studying the knowl-
edge people have of linguistic objects is not studying language but studying knowl-
edge of language (or competence). Studying language as an abstract object, then, is
the core of linguistics; it is here where linguistics is a science of its own, while the
study of both language use and knowledge of language are highly interdisciplinary.
2. The chapters of the volume
The chapters of this book offer different perspectives on Linguistic Realism, either
supporting this paradigm or taking it as a starting point for developing modified
conceptions of linguistics, best characterized as a kind of modified realism. The
initial chapters of the book deal with the foundations of linguistics, particularly
Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism i
concerning the ontological status of language and the character of linguistics as
a science. Paul M. Postal, one of the most dedicated and explicit proponents of
Linguistic Realism in the past 35 years, wrote the first chapter. In The ontology
of natural language, he reflects on the ontological status of words and sentences,
reviewing several approaches to that question since the advent of American Struc-
turalism. Covering both nominalism and conceptualism under the term natural-
istic view, he claims that such an approach is flawed because it assumes that words
and phrases are time/space particulars, which leads to an incoherent conception
of linguistics. Linguistic Realism – or in Postal’s terms the Platonist view – can
provide the foundation for a coherent conception of linguistics by taking words
and phrases as abstract objects.
In the second chapter, David Pitt asks: What kind of science is linguistics? Dis-
tinguishing between empirical and formal sciences, he doubts that the ontological
nature of the objects a science is dealing with exclusively determines the nature of
this science. In other words: Empirical sciences do not study exclusively concrete
but also abstract objects. If all sciences have the goal of discovering generaliza-
tions, then they deal with abstract objects. That is because the objects of gener-
alizations are types and types are abstract objects. In Pitt’s view, the nature of a
science is determined by its methodology. This evaluation leads to a plea for the
ontological diversity of linguistics.
Robert Levine discusses in ‘Biolinguistics’: some foundational problems two
notions of the term ‘biolinguistics’: In one sense – that he regards as scientific
credible – this term denotes the inquiry into identifying neurological structures
corresponding to the human capacity of language. In another sense, the biological
base of language is interpreted literally and mental grammars are regarded as real
objects. Generative Linguistics since the early 1980s is based on the second inter-
pretation. Levine argues that the frequently cited progress in the study of visual
cognition does not support this kind of biolinguistics. He furthermore reflects
critically on the assumed domain specificity of linguistic knowledge, and proposes
an alternative (a set-theoretical model) that takes the abstract nature of language
for granted.
In the next chapter, The relevance of realism for language evolution theoriz-
ing, Christina Behme argues that reconsidering the ontological status of natural
languages might lead to novel approaches to language evolution puzzles. Contem-
porary work on language evolution, focused on brain evolution, language acqui-
sition, and communication systems of other primates, has provided a rich body
of knowledge. Yet, so far such approaches have been unable to account for some
aspects of grammar. Paying closer attention to the distinction between language
and knowledge of language, as insisted upon by realists, could move language evo-
lution research beyond the existing impasse.
