Essays on linguistic realism / edited by Christina Behme, Mount Saint Vincent University ; Martin Neef, TU Braunschweig.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Intro; Essays on Linguistic Realism; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism; 1. Three kinds of linguistics; 2. The chapters of the volume; 3. The history of the book; References; 1. The ontology of natural language; References; 2. What kind of science is linguistics?; 1. The nature of formal and empirical sciences; 2. Methodology vs. ontology; 3. Linguistic kinds: Sentences; 4. Discovering and investigating meaning structure; 5. The phenomenology of meaning; 6. Linguistics as a mixed science; References; 3. 'Biolinguistics'

1. Preview: What's wrong with 'biolinguistics'2. Visual cognition: The role of early edge detection; The physical problem and its mathematical formulation; Generalities; Smoothing out the visual field; Identifying edges; From mathematical model to neural architecture; The Marr hierarchy and neurological literalism; 3. Domain specificity and natural language; What computation do sets of NL sentences represent?; Rules in Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar (HTLCG); Gapping; 4. Implication is not domain specific; 5. Summary and conclusions; References.

4. The relevance of realism for language evolution theorizing1. Introduction; 2. Some highlights from current language evolution research; 2.1 Cognitive capacities in non-human animals; 2.2 How close to language is animal communication?; 3. Ontological considerations; 4. Does linguistic evidence rule out linguistic realism?; 5. Conclusions; References; 5. Describing linguistic objects in a realist way; A. Topic and background of the essay; 1. Topic; 2. Modified Realism; 2.1 The position; 2.2 Three components of Modified Realism; Constructive realism; Non-cognitivist mentalism (intentionalism).

Weaker functionalism3. Discussion; 3.1 Explanations. A reason for realism; 3.2 Objects and data; 3.3 Linguistic inter-disciplines; 3.4 Placing Modified Realism; B. Grammatical description; 4. Preliminaries. Informal grammars; 4.1 Some basic distinctions; 4.2 Grammars as texts; 4.3 Remarks on idiolects and idiolect systems; 4.4 Sample statement from an informal grammar; 4.5 Terms in an informal grammar: Language specific and language overarching; Anchor 290; 5. Formal grammars: Problems for grammar adequacy; 5.1 Types of formal grammars. The requirement of semantic analogues.

5.2 Problems with language names and domain names5.3 Problems with grammatical terms; 5. Formal grammars: Problems for grammar adequacy; 5.1 Types of formal grammars. The requirement of semantic analogues; 5.2 Problems with language names and domain names; 5.3 Problems with grammatical terms; 6. How to solve the problems; 6.1 First Solution: The Irrelevance Conception; 6.2 Second Solution: The Language-Feature Conception; Anchor 298; 6.4 Third Solution: Cover-all Conceptions of Grammatical Terms; 6.5 Fourth Solution: Relativizing Conceptions of Grammatical Terms; 'article' relativized.

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