The methods and concerns of linguists and philosophers are similar in so many respects that it would be folly, I believe, to insist on a sharp separation of these disciplines, or for either to maintain a parochial disregard for insights achieved in the other. A number of examples might be cited to illustrate the possibility of fruitful interchange between the two. Zeno Vendler, in his recent book Linguistics and Philosophy, goes so far as to maintain that “the science of structural linguistics” provides “a new technique” for analytic philosophy, one that “is nothing but the natural continuation of the line of development that goes through the philosophers of ordinary language to J. L. Austin.” For reasons to which I will return in a moment, I am a bit skeptical about the contribution that linguistics might make to philosophy along the lines that he sketches, but I think that he has shown that certain concepts of linguistics can be used in a rewarding way in the investigation of problems that have arisen in analytic philosophy.

Conversely, as the attention of linguists begins to turn to problems of meaning and use, there is no question that they can learn much from the long tradition of philosophical investigation of such problems, although here too, I think, a note of skepticism is in order.