Brackets and slashes, stars and dots: understanding the notation of linguistic types

Abstract

The standard by which token expressions are classified as linguistically type equivalent has persistently attracted both philosophical speculation and linguistic inquiry. Yet while psychophysical, perceptual, structural and semantic accounts have all competed for preeminence, one problem affects every theoretical position: how to actually refer to a linguistic type. The notational technique of phonetic brackets and phonemic slash bars, while developed and deployed within linguistics, was also independently conceived of by the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars [Philosoph. Stud. 1 (1950) 24] in the form of his “star” and better known “dot” quotes. This convergence between phonological theory and philosophical semantics, and the significance of a concretized notation for referring to linguistic types, is highlighted by relating the Descriptivist failure to “reduce the phoneme” within American Structural linguistics to the philosophical challenge (Quine, W.V. 1953. From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA) to provide a non-semantic reduction of analytic equivalence.