Thursday, June 21, 2012

Geoffrey Pullum on nouns

Linguist Geoffrey Pullum on the inadequacy of traditional definitions of a noun:

It is useless to look for a common ontological nature in airspeeds, apples, and absences, or organizations, orchids, and orgasms. To give a definition that permits decisions as to whether a given English word is a noun or not, you have to consider morphological and syntactic facts.
I have on several occasions taken issue with what I see as Pullum’s distortions and exaggerations regarding The Elements of Style. Here though I think that Pullum is right. He and I agree about something after all.

[This post is for my son Ben, who has grammar and its problems on his mind.]

comments: 11

Jazzbumpa said...

A noun is a word that indicates a person, place or thing. I'll grant that organization is abstract and absence even more so, but an abstraction is a concept and a concept is a thing.

Airspeed = velocity.

Apple = fruit.

Absence = hole.

etc.

What's the problem?

JzB

Sean said...

When I first read your post it brought Wittgenstein to mind. Then when I read the original article, I was pleased to see the Tractatus quoted, but surprised he didn't also mention W's notion that the meaning of a word is derived from the application of the rules for its use (even though it seems that is what he is suggesting). For example:

"In fact what we regard as a thing, or a kind of stuff, is determined by what our language provides us with nouns for."

I don't want to open the hornet's nest of "definition versus meaning", but he seems mostly to be vamping on Wittgentein's riff (with a touch of Kripke).

Also, he seems angry.

Michael Leddy said...

But JzB, look at how Pullum puts it: he’s pointing out that airspeeds, apples, and absences have nothing in common that makes them nouns. They’re certainly not all “things” in any meaningful sense.

Sean, I think there’s a big meaning-as-use influence here. At the same time though, seeing the absence of a “common ontological nature” as a problem seems like the antithesis of Wittgensteinian thinking. W’s idea of family resemblances seems to me to make that problem vanish.

Pullum is a witty fellow, but certain subjects seem to get him going. When it comes to The Elements of Style, I think he gets run over by his own hobbyhorse.

Ben said...

All this brings to mind the medieval debate about whether categories are things that actually exist. For instance, when we call something a strawberry, we might be ready to admit that there isn't some sort of Platonic form "strawberry" that exists out there. But if there isn't some sort of objective form for what a strawberry is, what is that allows us to correctly or incorrectly label something as a strawberry--and what are we even talking about when we talk about strawberries?

For information here:


http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/3819

Michael Leddy said...

“But if there isn't some sort of objective form for what a strawberry is, what is that allows us to correctly or incorrectly label something as a strawberry?”

How about just our various experiences of strawberries? (Your dad’s a nominalist.)

Jazzbumpa said...

They’re certainly not all “things” in any meaningful sense.

Really? Why not. You can hold an apple in your hand.

You can measure velocity, and you can define it as rate of change in position. You can see its result.

Absence is a dashed expectation, a physical hole, or an observation [or experience] that inspires longing. Do you deny that thoughts and feelings are things?

It's true that these are all different categories of "thing," but so are unicorn and battleship.

You can't just blithely deny their thingitude without some firm justification. No hand waving allowed.

Pullum is just being cranky, if, in fact, he actually means what he says. I having a hard time getting past the feeling [a noun, you might note] that he is japing us. Certainly "below" has no thingitude in the same way that "absence" does and, similarly, "absent" does not.

Unicorns have nothing in common with battleships. So what?

All his nattering about metaphysics seems like something he made up, to have a complaint to write about. It's a contrived controversy - what my lovely wife calls borrowing trouble.

This: "In fact what we regard as a thing, or a kind of stuff, is determined by what our language provides us with nouns for," is simply fatuous. Until the concept of airspeed was needed there was no such noun. But when the need arose, the noun was invented. He has it exactly backward.

Seriously - you never have any problem identifying a noun when you see one. Pullum's article is psuedo-intellectual claptrap.

Cheers!
JzB

Michael Leddy said...

If you’re distinguishing among different categories of “thing,” that’s sort of making Pullum’s point — that there isn’t some ontological nature that they share. But as I said above, I don’t see that as a problem.

Me, I’d think of thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings. Except maybe for hope, which is the thing with feathers. :)

Jazzbumpa said...

I'm not making Pullum's point. He's framed the issue, and that constrains the dialog. He is attempting to slice and dice, and I say, "What's the point?"

Ontology aside, thoughts and feelings are things you can experience. So can feathers be, if the conditions are favorable.

Did the word "thing" in that sentence cause you any conceptual difficulty? If not, then there is no problem.

If so, I'd say forget the ontology thing, and have a cold thing in a frosty glass thing.

Cheers!
JzB

Jazzbumpa said...

But as I said above, I don’t see that as a problem.

Wait. Are we agreeing, and I didn't know it?

JzB

Michael Leddy said...

“Are we agreeing?”

I think so. What I think he’s right about is that the traditional definition of a noun — “person, place, or thing” — doesn’t hold up on examination.

Jazzbumpa said...

In that case, no, we're not agreeing.

Cheers!
JzB