Words and Other Linguistic Entities

Linguistic entities play a major part in almost all elements of our lives. Despite this, relatively little work exists in philosophy that considers what such entities are. In the work that does focus specifically on the metaphysics of words, the dominant view is type-realism, which posits that words are abstract types, instantiated by concrete tokens. This book argues, however, that type-realism faces a range of problems and that positing abstract types cannot help us to explain a range of ordinary everyday linguistic phenomena. In its place, this book argues in favour of a novel version of nominalism about words, holding that ordinary claims about words are in fact claims about collections of word-tokens only. Through combining nominalism with a trope-bundle metaphysics, this book proposes a 'bundle-nominalist' metaphysics of words, in which word-tokens are analysed as bundles of particular properties, which cluster in repeatable and predictable ways due to the acting of various homeostatic mechanisms. This view is then extended to other linguistic entities, such as morphemes, phonemes, sentences, and languages. The result is a unified metaphysics of linguistic entities, which is argued to be both consistent with linguistic theorising and highly explanatory. Words and Other Linguistic Entities outlines how this 'bundle-nominalist' metaphysics can provide new insights into a range of linguistic phenomena, including linguistic mistakes, linguistic change, and the nature of offensive language, and can help illuminate ongoing debates over the subject matter of linguistics and the evolution of language.

James (J. T. M.) Miller is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. Before this, he had temporary positions at Trinity College Dublin and Nottingham University. He works primarily in metaphysics (including metametaphysics) and the philosophy of language and linguistics, and in particular at the intersection of these areas. He has also worked on topics in the history of analytic philosophy, especially early analytic philosophy. His first book, Metaphysical Realism and Anti-Realism, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press as part of the Cambridge Elements in Metaphysics series.