Par auteur > Gasparri Luca

Under what conditions does an externale (a sequence of speech sounds, a mark of ink) qualify as an articulation of a given word? Classical treatments of the problem appeal to two principles: (Intentionalism) and (Tolerance). (Intentionalism) is the view that for every externale e and every word w, e counts as an articulation of w just in case e originates from the intention to token w (Kaplan 1999; 2011). (Tolerance) is the view that for every e and every w, e counts as an articulation of w just in case e meets the local performance standards on w (Hawthorne & Lepore 2011). Both (Intentionalism) and (Tolerance) face difficulties. (Intentionalism) is threatened by the conceivability of unintentional articulations; (Tolerance) by the conceivability of locally anomalous articulations (Cappelen 1999; Bromberger 2011). Stojnić (2022) offers an alternative: Originalism-Plus-Transfer (OPT). On (OPT), for every e and every w, e is an articulation of w just in case e tokens (selects) w from the speaker's mental lexicon, grounded in the network of causal-historical chains leading back to w's neologizing event. In this talk, I plan to: a) show that while (OPT) improves upon treatments based on (Intentionalism) and (Tolerance), it suffers in turn from additional difficulties; b) derive the desiderata on an improved treatment of the problem; and c) propose an alternative. The gist of the view is that for every e and every w, e is an articulation of w just in case e originates from an utterance template that reproduces the local grammatical standards on w. I will offer an argument that the account has the resources required to address all the difficulties on the table (including those incurred by the classical accounts), and aligns with psychological data on utterance production (a.o., Levelt 1999; Harley & MacAndrew 2001; McClelland et al. 2014).

Key references
Bromberger, S. (2011). ‘What are words? Comments on Kaplan (1990), on Hawthorne and Lepore, and on the issue'. Journal of Philosophy, 108, 486–503.
Cappelen, H. (1999). ‘Intentions in words'. Noûs, 33, 92–102.
Harley, T. A., & MacAndrew, S. B. G. (2001). ‘Constraints upon word substitution speech errors'. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30, 395–418.
Hawthorne, J., & Lepore, E. (2011). ‘On words'. Journal of Philosophy, 108, 447–485.
Kaplan, D. (1990). ‘Words'. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 64, 93–120.
Kaplan, D. (2011). ‘Words on Words'. Journal of Philosophy, 108, 504–529.
Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). ‘Producing spoken language: A blueprint of the speaker'. In C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The Neurocognition of Language (pp. 82–122). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McClelland, J. L., Mirman, D., Bolger, D. J., & Khaitan, P. (2014). ‘Interactive activation and mutual constraint satisfaction in perception and cognition'. Cognitive Science, 38, 1139–1189.
Stojnić, U. (2022). ‘Just words: Intentions, tolerance and lexical selection'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 105, 3–17.

[Word count, excl. references: 299]