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Grammaticality, response-dependence and the ontology of linguistic objects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Jussi Haukioja
Jussi Haukioja
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, 20014, Finland. E-mail: jussi.haukioja@utu.fi
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Abstract

The problem of explaining the knowledge possessed by a native speaker of a natural language and the philosophical problem of rule-following are juxtaposed, and the former is seen to be an instance of the latter. A recent solution to the rule-following problem is reviewed, with special attention to the consequences that the solution has for the nature of those concepts acquired from exemplars. The concept of a grammatical sentence is one of these. Finally, it is shown that, as a consequence, we can see the grammaticality of a sentence to be an abstract property, which is simultaneously objective and tied to the responses of competent speakers. Thus, we gain a better understanding of some central questions in the philosophy of linguistics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , June 2000 , pp. 3 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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