Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence?

Miller, J.T.M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-92192-7_3

Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence?

Miller, J.T.M.

Authors

Dr James Miller james.miller@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Contributors

S. Wuppuluri
Editor

I. Steward
Editor

Abstract

There are many different sorts of linguistic objects: words, sentences, paragraphs, phonemes, morphemes, and many more. There are also linguistic properties. That is, there are properties that seem, prima facie, to be (perhaps even uniquely) instantiated by linguistic objects. I have, elsewhere, explored whether some of these linguistic properties instantiated by higher-level objects are ontologically emergent properties (Miller, 2017). In this paper, I explore the weaker idea that linguistics posits properties that are epistemically or weakly emergent, where (broadly put) a property is epistemically emergent when its existence, or its causal powers, cannot be understood without considering the higher-level behaviour of the object. Epistemic emergence has been very influential within the scientific community with possible examples from various domains. Indeed, some argue that it is required to account for the failure of inter-theoretic reduction. My focus in this paper is whether the same is true in linguistics: does linguistics need to posit emergent properties, and, if so, are such properties (merely) epistemically emergent?

Citation

Miller, J. (2022). Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence?. In S. Wuppuluri, & I. Steward (Eds.), From Electrons to Elephants and Elections (23-38). (1). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92192-7_3

Online Publication Date	Apr 9, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	Apr 26, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Apr 10, 2024
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Pages	23-38
Series Title	The Frontiers Collection
Edition	1
Book Title	From Electrons to Elephants and Elections
ISBN	978-3-030-92191-0
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92192-7_3
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1622122

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Copyright Statement
This a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a chapter published in From Electrons to Elephants to Elections. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92192-7_3