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    Differences in sound between tokens of the same word can ... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Differences in sound between tokens of the same word can be arbitrarily great, so shared sound is not what makes tokens of the same word the same word.

    Philosophy of Language
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Saussure's distinction between langue and parole entails that word identity is determined by structural contrasts within a system, not acoustic substance.
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    • 2.If word identity were grounded in sound, then the same utterance heard by speakers of different languages would constitute tokens of the same word, which is false.
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    • 3.Therefore, the criterion for word-token sameness must be functional-relational position within a linguistic system, which is invariant across acoustically divergent productions.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Kripke's rule-following considerations show that no finite set of physical instances fixes a unique rule, so acoustic similarity alone cannot determine type-membership.
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    • 2.Wittgenstein's private language argument establishes that meaning is constituted by public normative practice, not by intrinsic physical properties of individual utterances.
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    • 3.Competent speakers correct mispronunciations by appeal to social-normative standards, confirming that sound is evidence for, not constitutive of, word identity.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.A test subject who intends to repeat a word, but has filters applied that radically alter the sound of her output, is still saying the word she heard.
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    • 2.If the word she produces can differ arbitrarily in sound from the original and still count as a token of the same word, then sound identity is not the criterion for word-token sameness.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    A test subject who intends to repeat a word, but has filters applied that radica...Competent speakers correct mispronunciations by appeal to social-normative stand...If the word she produces can differ arbitrarily in sound from the original and s...If word identity were grounded in sound, then the same utterance heard by speake...
    +4 moreShow less
    Kripke's rule-following considerations show that no finite set of physical insta...Saussure's distinction between langue and parole entails that word identity is d...Therefore, the criterion for word-token sameness must be functional-relational p...Wittgenstein's private language argument establishes that meaning is constituted...

    Similar

    If the word she produces can differ arbitrarily in sound from the orig...85%Two sounds can be indistinguishable yet still be distinct from one ano...82%The same sentence token can express different thoughts when used by di...81%Not all tokens of the same word type resemble each other in any ordina...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: types-tokens
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    However, the final nail in the coffin for the suggestion according to which all tokens of the same word have the "same sound" is that words can be mispronounced. As Kaplan (1990) has argued, a word can suffer extreme mispronunciation and still be (a token of) the same word. He asks us to imagine a test subject, who faithfully repeats each word she is told. After a time, we put filters on her that radically alter the results of her efforts. Nonetheless, we would say she is saying the word she hea
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit