Understanding Linguistic Functions

In this third lecture, Amie L. Thomasson argues that philosophy has gone astray by ignoring the different functions that various parts of language serve in human life. She draws on tools from systemic functional linguistics to examine how features like mood, modality, and nominalization work, and why they evolved in language. Thomasson distinguishes between mere uses and proper functions, drawing on evolutionary and system-based accounts of function. She pays special attention to nominalizations, explaining how they enter language and why they have generated persistent philosophical puzzles about abstract entities. Along the way, she considers other approaches to linguistic function, including Matthieu Queloz's needs-based method, which asks what we could not do without certain terms and concepts. The lecture sets the stage for applying these insights to debates about morality and truth in the lectures that follow.