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It is not the case that Standard Linguistic Entities (SLEs) cannot be identified with physical (acoustic) spatio-temporal phenomena
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Reasons For
1 perspective
Reason for
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1.
SLEs do not share the same kind of existence as concrete physical objects
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2.
SLEs are intentional inexistents — fictions of a particular sort — rather than real spatio-temporal entities
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Reasons Against
2 perspectives
Reason against 1 of 2
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1.
The same phonological word-type (e.g., 'bank') can be instantiated by acoustically distinct tokens differing in pitch, duration, and amplitude.
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2.
No two acoustic events share identical physical parameters, yet competent speakers recognize them as tokens of one and the same linguistic type.
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3.
Type-identity with a physical particular requires sharing all essential physical properties, which no abstract linguistic type can do with any single acoustic event.
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Reason against 2 of 2
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1.
Peirce's type-token distinction entails that linguistic types are abstract repeatable structures, not located at any single spatio-temporal coordinate.
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2.
A spatio-temporal particular cannot recur at multiple times and places simultaneously, but a single SLE such as the English word 'cat' does precisely this across all utterances.
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