Conceptual alternatives: Competition in language and beyond

Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (2):265-291 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Things we can say, and the ways in which we can say them, compete with one another. And this has consequences: words we decide not to pronounce have critical effects on the messages we end up conveying. For instance, in saying Chris is a good teacher, we may convey that Chris is not an amazing teacher. How this happens is an unsolvable problem, unless a theory of alternatives indicates what counts, among all the things that have not been pronounced. It is sometimes assumed, explicitly or implicitly, that any word counts, as long as that word could have replaced one that was actually pronounced. We review arguments for going beyond this powerful idea. In doing so, we argue that the level of words is not the right level of analysis for alternatives. Instead, we capitalize on recent conceptual and associated methodological advances within the study of the so-called “language of thought” to reopen the problem from a new perspective. Specifically, we provide theoretical and experimental arguments that the relation between alternatives and words may be indirect, and that alternatives are not merely linguistic objects in the traditional sense. Rather, we propose that competition in language is significantly determined by general reasoning preferences, or thought preferences. We propose that such non-linguistic preferences can be measured and that these measures can be used to explain linguistic competition, non-linguistically, and more in depth.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

On the characterization of alternatives.Danny Fox Roni Katzir - 2011 - Natural Language Semantics 19 (1):87-107.
The No Alternatives Argument.Richard Dawid, Stephan Hartmann & Jan Sprenger - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1):213-234.
Constraining the derivation of alternatives.Tue Trinh & Andreas Haida - 2015 - Natural Language Semantics 23 (4):249-270.
The most basic units of thought do more, and less, than point.Frank Keil - 1998 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1):75-76.
The Possibilities of History.Daniel Nolan - 2016 - Journal of the Philosophy of History 10 (3):441-456.
The modes of value.Sven Ove Hansson - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 104 (1):33 - 46.
Alternatives in Framing and Decision Making.Bart Geurts - 2013 - Mind and Language 28 (1):1-19.
Reason claims and contrastivism about reasons.Justin Snedegar - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (2):231-242.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-05-31

Downloads
34 (#407,456)

6 months
8 (#158,054)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

References found in this work

Logic and Conversation.H. P. Grice - 1975 - In Donald Davidson & Gilbert Harman (eds.), The Logic of Grammar. Encino, CA: pp. 64-75.
Word learning as Bayesian inference.Fei Xu & Joshua B. Tenenbaum - 2007 - Psychological Review 114 (2):245-272.

View all 24 references / Add more references