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Language Arts & Disciplines General

Words and Thoughts

Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language

by (author) Robert Stainton

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
May 2009
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780199250394
    Publish Date
    May 2009
    List Price
    $66.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780199250387
    Publish Date
    Aug 2006
    List Price
    $68.00

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Description

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words. Sentences, it is said, are what we believe, assert, and argue for; uses of them constitute our evidence in semantics; only they stand in inferential relations, and are true or false. Sentences are, indeed, the only things that fundamentally have meaning.

Does this near truism really hold of human languages? Robert Stainton, drawing on a wide body of evidence, argues forcefully that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complete thoughts. He then considers the implications of this empirical result for language-thought relations, various doctrines of sentence primacy, and the semantics-pragmatics boundary.

The book is important both for its philosophical and empirical claims, and for the methodology employed. Stainton illustrates how the methods and detailed results of the various cognitive sciences can bear on central issues in philosophy of language. At the same time, he applies philosophical distinctions with subtlety and care, to show that arguments which seemingly support the primacy of sentences do not really do so. The result is a paradigm example of The New Philosophy of Language: a rich melding of empirical work with traditional philosophy of language.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Robert Stainton is at the University of Western Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

'interesting and rich in ideas ... should be read with great interest. ' Alessandro Capone, University of Messina

'Review from previous edition Stainton is a meticulous philosopher. In iWords and Thoughts/i, he explains his positions and those of his opponents in great detail and with great care. . . . the book is overall easy to read. . . . iWords and Thoughts/i is to be enthusiastically recommended to philosophers of language, particularly to the growing group of philosophers conversant with the cutting-edge work in linguistics. ' Edouard Machery, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews