Degree is the simplest of the node-level measures, but its simplicity often hides its power. Here we will apply degree to the problem of mental structure. Specifically, what is the structure of the relationships between information in the mind? George Kingsley Zipf observed that word frequencies in natural language tend to a follow a scale-free distribution: The most frequent words are few, while the less frequent words are many with a specific linear relationship on a log-log plot. It has also been suggested that this power-law distribution applies to the relationships between words as well as to their meanings. Some words share meanings with many other words while others share few. This is a hypothesis based on the structural distribution of shared meanings, or polysemy (words with multiple meanings). This chapter will explain the theory underlying Zipf’s law of meaning and power laws. It will also show how we can combine these ideas with the most basic node-level network measure: degree.

The terms linguistics and philology refer to different but overlapping areas of the Humanities. An opposition between them does not predate the triumph of structuralism. Structuralist linguistics devoted itself mainly to synchrony and theory, with lexicology and lexicography ending up in no-man’s land. A detailed look at dictionary definitions of linguistics and philology for more than three centuries offers a picture of the goals of both disciplines and of the ways the public understood language studies. Before the twentieth century, the focus of philology was the interpretation of old texts and word origins. The treatment of special terminology (including the terminology of linguistics) in dictionaries shows that despite all the differences a clear line between linguistics and philology cannot and need not be drawn, just as such a line cannot always be drawn between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. In the context of the present study, the use of etymology and phonetic transcription in various dictionaries illuminates the difference between and the unity of philology and linguistics.

In this chapter the focus moves beyond Pāṇini’s grammar to address a topic of major concern within the broader Indian tradition: semantics. While some observations regarding semantics can be drawn from Pāṇini, for the most part semantics was treated as a separate field of inquiry within the Indian tradition until the early modern period. This chapter provides introductions to the traditions of semantic analysis in ancient India and the modern West, and a comparison of their approaches to one issue of central concern in semantic theory: compositionality.

It is relatively well known that Buridan’s nominalist semantics changed “the rules of the game” in practically all fields of philosophy and science. For instance, in his semantics, the traditional distinction between essential and accidental predicates is mapped onto the Ockhamist distinction between absolute and connotative terms and concepts. It is, however, still not quite well understood what impact these “new rules” had in particular philosophical disciplines. This essay offers a case study of the late-medieval paradigm change brought about by nominalist “semantical innovations.” In particular, it contrasts Aquinas’ “semantics-driven mereology” with Buridan’s, set against the background of Buridan’s new, nominalist semantics, arguing that the two authors’ differences in their mereological considerations are rooted in the differences between their diverse semantic intuitions. The conclusion of the essay will provide a brief logical and historical evaluation of the paradigmatic changes brought about by these diverse intuitions.

Carnap’s naturalism evidently differs from Quine’s, but the precise nature of this difference has proven elusive. This chapter focuses on what Quine defends as his “provincial” naturalism against a Carnapian “cosmopolitan” alternative. The problem with this contrast, however, is that Quine does not represent a pure form of what he calls a “provincial” view. This is illustrated by his tergiversations about analyticity; after initially denying that there was even an explicandum worth bothering about, he later offered his own ordinary-language-based account of analyticity, without feeling any need to supply a more exact explication; there would appear to be no way to resolve the resulting stand-off with the cosmopolitan standpoint. This paper suggests a more robust explicandum for analyticity (and cosmopolitanism more generally). We come back, in the end, to the confrontation between Carnap and Quine in Chicago in 1950, where Carnap convinced Quine that their differences did not concern any question about which there could be right or wrong, correct or incorrect; it is regretted that Quine soon lost this lesson from sight.

A few years after his adoption of both a syntactical method and a principle of tolerance in the early thirties, Carnap turned to semantics when he learned about Tarski’s work on the definition of a truth predicate. How significant is this semantical turn? Carnap scholars have so much emphasized that The Logical Syntax anticipates Tarskian semantics that they tended to minimize the importance of Carnap’s adoption of a semantical approach. As a consequence, his semantical turn has not always been given the importance it deserves. Its meaning, scope and consequences have also often been misunderstood. This paper contributes to a re-evaluation of Tarski’s influence on Carnap in view of the fact that Carnap is far from having just followed Tarski’s way. We examine some specificities of Carnap’s approach of semantics. We also discuss what is left of the syntactic method after the adoption of semantics and what the relations between syntax and semantics become from the late thirties on. The following topics are given specific attention: languages, formal systems, and calculi; truth, L-truth, and L-validity; L-states, L-ranges, and state descriptions. We also analyze the impact of semantics on the principle of tolerance.

The prevailing view of Buridan’s theory of cognition and his epistemology is that he is a kind of externalist as well as a reliabilist. This essay argues that this reading is mistaken and that Buridan instead must be seen as a semantic and epistemic internalist. The essay develops the arguments for both these views. The first part of the essay supplements an argument already made by Claude Panaccio, but the second part is a new argument for why Buridan must be seen as an epistemological internalist. The essay also compares Buridan to later empiricists such as David Hume.

Kripke’s writings can be understood as suggesting that Wittgenstein, though a non-reductionist, was not a quietist about meaning, that is, did not maintain that nothing philosophically constructive could be said about it. It is Kripke and the quietist who can in fact be seen to have much in common. For, though they both conceive of the skeptical challenge as a meta-semantical challenge, calling for a foundational account of meaning, they both end up with purely semantic, descriptive remarks about meaning. Failing to share his diagnosis of the paradox with Wittgenstein, Kripke does not recognize that, once the skeptical problem is dissolved, as Wittgenstein recommends, a new meta-semantical challenge arises, which is connected to the essential link Wittgenstein emphasizes between meaning and use. Consequently, Kripke does not see that the positive remarks Wittgenstein makes after dismissing the skeptical paradox, especially those concerning agreement, are meant to do some constructive, not just descriptive, work, in response to the problem newly arisen.

This chapter explores the intersections between work by literary scholars with that done in synchronic and diachronic Latin linguistics. As an example of the different approaches and different toolkits employed by the linguist and the literary scholar, I discuss the way linguists have explained the phrase Veneres Cupidinesque in Catullus 3.1, contrasted with interpretations given in commentaries on Catullus and in Latin dictionaries. In the linguists’ account, the phrase is an archaism which continues an earlier Indo-European pattern used to refer to pairs, finding its closest parallels in Sanskrit texts. I then compare literary Latin to other registers and dialects, and discuss the difficulties involved in the term ‘Vulgar Latin’. The chapter also examines other areas in which linguistic scholarship might be usefully consulted by readers of Latin literature: word accent, vowel-length and metre; etymology, semantics and the lexicography; grammars and monographs on morphology, syntax and discourse analysis, including in particular recent approaches using sociolinguistics. Passages from Catullus are discussed throughout.

This chapter presents a view on context as understood within functional models of language, specifically the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Amongst the functional approaches to language, SFL is recognized as a framework which has maintained an account of context that has prioritized its relationship with lexicogrammar, allowing it to make a causal connection between culture and language. The aim of this chapter is to highlight and explain the principal ways in which context works within the SFL framework and explore the main themes and parameters which situate context within an integrated theory of language as a semiotic resource. As no theory emerges in a vacuum, the first part of the chapter will consider the historical development of context as a concept within SFL theory with reference to how context is situated in other related functional grammars. Following this, we examine two areas of challenge related to the approach to context outlined in the chapter. Finally, the chapter concludes with closing remarks and key directions for future research in this area.