The Unfinished Chomskyan Revolution

: Chomsky's criticism of Bloomfieldian structuralism's conception of linguistic reality applies equally to his own conception of linguistic reality. There are too many sentences in a natural language for them to have either concrete acoustic reality or concrete psychological or neural reality. Sentences have to be types, which, by Peirce's generally accepted definition, means that they are abstract objects. Given that sentences are abstract objects, Chomsky's generativism as well as his psychologism have to be given up. Langendoen and Postal's argument in The Vastness of Natural Languages to show that there are more than denumerably many sentences is flawed. But, with the view that sentences are abstract objects, the flaws can be corrected. Once psychologism and generativism are abandoned, the revolution against Bloomfieldian structuralism can be brought to completion and linguistics can be put on a sound philosophical basis.

[1]  L. Brouwer,et al.  Intuitionism and formalism , 1913 .

[2]  C. Hartshorne,et al.  Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , 1935, Nature.

[3]  Leonard Bloomfield,et al.  Language or ideas , 1936 .

[4]  L. Bloomfield.  Linguistic Aspects of Science , 1935, Philosophia Scientiæ.

[5]  Nelson Goodman,et al.  Steps toward a constructive nominalism , 1947, Journal of Symbolic Logic.

[6]  G. Frege.  On Sense and Reference , 1948 .

[7]  W. Quine.  The two dogmas of empiricism , 1951 .

[8]  Willard Van Orman Quine,et al.  From a Logical Point of View , 1955 .

[9]  Frederick A. Zehrer,et al.  Review of Verbal behavior. , 1959 .

[10]  Noam Chomsky.  Review of B.F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior , 1959 .

[11]  Willard Van Orman Quine,et al.  Word and Object , 1960 .

[12]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  वाक्यविन्यास का सैद्धान्तिक पक्ष = Aspects of the theory of syntax , 1965 .

[13]  Paul Benacerraf,et al.  Philosophy of mathematics: What numbers could not be , 1965 .

[14]  J. Katz.  The philosophy of language , 1967 .

[15]  L. Brouwer.  CONSCIOUSNESS, PHILOSOPHY, AND MATHEMATICS , 1975 .

[16]  M. Black,et al.  Translations from the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege , 1953 .

[17]  Jerrold J. Katz,et al.  Language and other abstract objects , 1980 .

[18]  Hartry Field,et al.  Science without Numbers , 1983 .

[19]  Ray Jackendoff.  Semantics and Cognition , 1983 .

[20]  David Hilbert.  Philosophy of mathematics: On the infinite , 1984 .

[21]  D. Terence Langendoen,et al.  The vastness of natural languages , 1984 .

[22]  Hilary Putnam,et al.  Philosophy of mathematics : selected readings , 1984 .

[23]  Noam Chomsky.  Knowledge of Language , 1986 .

[24]  Noam Chomsky.  Language in a psychological setting , 1988 .

[25]  Sylvain Bromberger,et al.  Types and tokens in linguistics , 1988 .

[26]  Scott Soames,et al.  SEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC COMPETENCE , 1989 .

[27]  Review Essay: Reflections on Kurt Godel@@@Reflections on Kurt Godel. , 1989 .

[28]  James V. Rauff.  Review of The vastness of natural languages by D. Terence Langendoen and Paul M. Postal. Basil Blackwell 1984. , 1989 .

[29]  Hartry Field,et al.  Realism, Mathematics, and Modality , 1989 .

[30]  Jerrold J. Katz.  The Metaphysics Of Meaning , 1990 .

[31]  J. Katz,et al.  Realism vs. conceptualism in linguistics , 1991 .

[32]  Scott Soames.  The necessity argument , 1991 .

[33]  David J. Israel.  Katz and postal on realism , 1991 .

[34]  James Higginbotham,et al.  Remarks on the metaphysics of linguistics , 1991 .

[35]  Realism, mathematics and modality, by Field Hartry, Blackwell Basil, Oxford and New York 1989, viii + 290 pp. , 1991 .

[36]  Logic, Mind and Mathematics , 1993 .

[37]  Noam Chomsky.  Language and Nature , 1995 .

[38]  Jerrold J. Katz,et al.  AN OUTLINE OF PLATONIST GRAMMAR I , 2022 .