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    Finding that unrelated languages use distinct words for t... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Finding that unrelated languages use distinct words for two alleged senses of a word is evidence that those senses are genuinely distinct rather than artificially distinguished

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Lexical ambiguity involves accidental homophony between two separate and unrelated meanings
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    • 2.There is no reason why languages unrelated to English would reproduce the same accidental pairing of distinct meanings under a single word form
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    • 3.Therefore, if unrelated languages independently lexicalize the two alleged senses with separate words, the senses are likely genuinely distinct
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Languages carve semantic space differently based on cultural salience, not underlying ontological distinctions between concepts.
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    • 2.A language may lexically split a concept due to pragmatic or cultural pressures entirely independent of whether the senses are genuinely distinct.
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    • 3.Therefore, cross-linguistic divergence tracks patterns of use and cultural relevance, not the metaphysics of sense individuation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Whorfian underdetermination shows that the same conceptual reality can be lexicalized with radically different granularity across languages without implying distinct underlying meanings.
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    • 2.English 'blue' covers what Russian splits into 'siniy' and 'goluboy', yet this does not show English speakers perceive a genuinely ambiguous term rather than a unified color concept.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    A language may lexically split a concept due to pragmatic or cultural pressures ...English 'blue' covers what Russian splits into 'siniy' and 'goluboy', yet this d...Languages carve semantic space differently based on cultural salience, not under...Lexical ambiguity involves accidental homophony between two separate and unrelat...
    +4 moreShow less
    There is no reason why languages unrelated to English would reproduce the same a...Therefore, cross-linguistic divergence tracks patterns of use and cultural relev...Therefore, if unrelated languages independently lexicalize the two alleged sense...Whorfian underdetermination shows that the same conceptual reality can be lexica...

    Similar

    Therefore, if unrelated languages independently lexicalize the two all...93%Genuinely distinct lexical senses would be expected to be independentl...85%If no language is found that uses distinct words for the allegedly dis...85%There is no reason why languages unrelated to English would reproduce ...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: ambiguity
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    The notion of definition here has to be taken as a heavy-weight notion: ‘bank’ is ambiguous even though you can ‘define’ it as ‘financial institution or river side’. However, we can get a reasonable grip on what Aristotle had in mind. ‘Uncle’ is not ambiguous because it has a single definition that covers both: x is an uncle iff x is the brother of y and y has a child. The test depends partly on how strict we are about what counts as a definition. And on the assumption that there are interesti
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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