ABSTRACT
The interaction of linguistics and the philosophy of language regularly inspires florid description. One philosopher describes his discipline as the “initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous: from time to time it throws off some portion of itself to take station as a planet,” and he goes on to suggest that linguistics may be among its satellites (Austin 1956, 232). In the words of one linguist, philosophy is more like “a rummage sale that sometimes offers useful items for the home improver” (Nunberg 2002, 679). Higginbotham 2002 offers the tantalizingly ambiguous observation that “linguistics and philosophy, like steak and barbecue sauce, have much to give each other” (575). And contemporary interactions between linguists and philosophers of language are so extensive that these descriptions fail to capture the extent to which it is increasingly difficult just to delineate the fields.
