IN WHAT SENSE CAN STATEMENTS ABOUT LANGUAGES BE TRUE?

• Authors: Paul Rastall
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article considers descriptive statements about languages and language phenomena and seeks to determine how such statements can be 'true'. Descriptive statements about languages are considered from the points of view of the correspondence and coherence theories of truth and from the point of view of hypothetic-deductive testing. It is argued that descriptive statements about languages are rationally discussable interpretations disciplined by what we can observe within a given paradigm, and that issues of truth and issues of empirical testing should be distinguished.

Keywords

EN

COHERENCE THEORY; CORRESPONDENCE THEORY; DESCRIPTIVE STATEMENTS; HYPOTHETIC-DEDUCTIVISM; LANGUAGES; SPEECH PHENOMENA; TRUTH

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 14-25
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Paul Rastall

• Paul Rastall, Division of Language Studies, Community College, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11SKAAAA09692