Chapter 6. Languages and other abstract structures

Form and formalism in linguistics

“… See Chomsky (1986) for the received psychological view on the ontology of linguistics,Katz & Postal (1991) for a Platonist interpretation,Devitt (2006) for a non-psychological physicalist view, and Stainton (2014) for a mixture of all the above. SeeNefdt (2018) for an alternative mixture of these views.…”

“…Unlike Platonists, who claim among other things that languages are individual abstract objects like sets, or mentalists, who claim they are psychological or internal states of the brain, a structuralist could argue that languages are complex structures in part identified by abstract rules and physical properties. SeeNefdt (2018) for precisely such a view.…”