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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that 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.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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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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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 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 against 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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