The literature on language is among the most technical in twentieth-century philosophy and among the most active in the cognitive sciences. The framework engages the principal positions by name; each is taken up again at [§8.10.5](<8.10.5 What is Concluded.md>) once the structural account is in view.

*Saussurean structuralism.* Saussure's (1916) *Cours de linguistique générale* established the modern study of language with the distinction between *langue* and *parole*, the arbitrariness of the sign, and the structural relations among signs as the locus of linguistic meaning. The position has organized continental linguistics and semiotics for a century. The framework reads Saussure as correctly identifying that language is a system rather than a list, while supplying the deeper claim: the system has the structure it has because it tracks the structure of what language is about, with arbitrariness operating at the surface and structural fit operating beneath.

*Chomskyan generativism.* Chomsky (1957, 1965, 1986, 1995) developed the generativist tradition on which linguistic competence requires an innate language faculty supplying universal grammatical structure. The position has been refined through government-and-binding theory, the minimalist program, and the broader cognitive-linguistic enterprise; it has been challenged by usage-based and construction-grammar approaches (Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2006). The framework reads Chomsky as correctly identifying that linguistic competence requires recursive structure, while supplying the deeper claim: the recursive structure is what propositional transmission requires for embedding propositions within propositions, not a species-specific endowment hovering autonomous from what language is for.

*Wittgensteinian meaning-as-use.* Wittgenstein's (1953) *Philosophical Investigations* developed the position that meaning is constituted by the use of words in shared practices, with rule-following grounded in form-of-life rather than in private mental content. The position has been refined through Kripkenstein (Kripke 1982), Wright (1980), and the broader use-theoretic tradition. The framework reads Wittgenstein as correctly identifying that meaning is bound to use — a proposition that does not function in the practice of any community of speakers does not transmit — while supplying the deeper claim: the practices succeed in transmission because they coordinate on the structural conditions transmission requires. The later work's distinctive moves bear directly on the framework's own vocabulary. Language-games and forms of life locate meaning in patterned shared activity rather than in inner ostension; family resemblance denies that a general term needs a common essence to function; and the rule-following considerations deny that meaning is fixed by any private act of interpretation. The framework takes these as constraints it must meet, not positions it must defeat: a shared region of modal field counts as shared only where there is a public practice of correction — speakers who can be brought back into line when they use a term wrongly — which is what use in a form of life supplies and what a private inner sample could not. This criterial pressure is turned back on the framework's own terms at [§8.10.5](<8.10.5 What is Concluded.md>).

*Frege and the sense-reference distinction.* Frege (1892) distinguished sense from reference and located meaning in a third realm of abstract objects. The position has been refined through Russell, Carnap, and contemporary semantics. The framework reads Frege as correctly identifying that propositional content has both a referential and a presentational aspect, while supplying the deeper claim: the sense-reference structure is what propositional content has when it carries a claim about structure to another mind, with the abstract-objects metaphysics dispensable.

*Kripke and direct reference.* Kripke (1980) *Naming and Necessity* developed the direct-reference tradition on which names refer through causal-historical chains rather than through descriptions speakers can articulate. The position has been refined and contested across forty years (Soames 2002; Kaplan 1989; Stalnaker 1997). The framework reads Kripke as correctly identifying that reference must survive disagreement and error about what is being referred to, while supplying the structural reading: causal-historical chains succeed in transmitting reference because they preserve the structural connection between the speaker using the name and the person or object the name picks out.

*Davidsonian truth-conditional semantics.* Davidson (1967, 1973, 1984) developed the program of treating semantics as the specification of truth-conditions, with compositionality as the structural feature that makes infinite production from finite resources possible. The framework reads Davidson as correctly identifying that systematic compositionality is what makes propositional language possible at scale, while supplying the structural reading: compositionality works because the medium itself supports the embedding of structure within structure. Davidson's (1974) sharpest objection, though, cuts toward this framework rather than away from it. In *On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme* he argued that the picture of a conceptual scheme that organizes, fits, or carves an uninterpreted reality — what he called a third dogma of empiricism — is unintelligible, since there is no standpoint outside both language and world from which scheme and content could be lined up and checked against each other. A framework that speaks of a Reality all description answers to, and of T, S, and Φ as what carves it, is exactly the kind of view that objection targets. The framework reads Davidson here as correctly identifying that any scheme-against-content dualism is hopeless, and meets the charge not by defending such a dualism but by denying it has one — the reply taken up at [§8.10.5](<8.10.5 What is Concluded.md>).

*Quinean indeterminacy.* Quine (1960) argued that translation is underdetermined: no observable behavior fully fixes the model in another speaker's mind. The position has been refined and contested across decades (Davidson 1973; Soames 1989). The framework reads Quine as correctly identifying that the gap between minds is real, while supplying the structural reading: what closes the gap sufficiently is alignment under shared conditions rather than identity of internal representation, with translation succeeding to the extent the structural features align.

*Searle's Chinese Room and the symbol-grounding problem.* Searle (1980) argued that symbol manipulation is not understanding: a system implementing a syntactic program does not thereby grasp the semantic content the symbols are about. The position has been refined and contested across decades (the systems reply, the robot reply, Searle 1984). The framework reads Searle as correctly identifying that the propositional transmission requires something that mere syntactic manipulation does not supply, while supplying the structural reading: that something is the recursive self-modeling that runs on both ends of the transmission, with the structure of the proposition mapping onto structure on each end.

*Large language models.* The recent emergence of LLMs (OpenAI's GPT family; Anthropic's Claude; Google's Gemini) has reorganized debates about whether and how computational systems engage in language. Disputes are live: some hold LLMs demonstrate that language can be mastered without semantic understanding (Bender et al. 2021); others argue LLMs may have rudimentary forms of understanding (Bowman 2023). The framework reads LLMs as engaging in a structurally interesting subset of linguistic activity: they manipulate the surface structure of language with substantial success and they instantiate parts of the recursive structure transmission requires, while what they share with self-modeling mind-to-mind transmission remains an open empirical and conceptual question.

*Whorfian relativity.* The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — that language shapes thought — has been refined through decades of cross-linguistic cognitive research (Lucy 1992; Levinson 2003; Boroditsky 2011). The empirical record shows real but generally moderate language-thought interactions. The framework reads the moderate Whorfian results as picking up real conceptual-elaboration effects, while denying the strong-Whorfian claim that language constitutes thought: the underlying registration runs whether or not specific languages are imposed on it.

*Haslanger and the constitutive dimension of social kinds.* Haslanger (2000, 2012) developed the ameliorative-analysis project: rather than asking what our concepts *do* mean or what their referents *naturally* are, it asks what a concept *should* mean given the legitimate purposes it serves, and argues that for social categories — gender, race, role — language partly constitutes which categories are practically available rather than merely labeling kinds fixed independently of it. The framework places this between the Whorfian and conventionalist poles it has already located: stronger than moderate Whorfian content-effects, since social kinds are partly brought into and held in existence by the classifying practice; weaker than constitution of thought as such, since reference and predication run whether or not any particular social vocabulary is imposed. Read in modal-field terms, an ameliorative category is an exterior modal map maintained across a community: classifying a person under it installs a region of social possibility — what is expected, permitted, withheld, or owed — in every speaker trained to the term. This is the social-ontology work the [§8.5](<8.5 Identity.md>) account of relational identity forward-points to, received here where social categories are actually built and policed.

*Brandom, Lewis, and the social-pragmatic tradition.* Brandom (1994) developed an inferentialist account on which meaning is constituted by the role expressions play in giving and asking for reasons, and — extending the line that runs from Sellars — a modal expressivism on which modal vocabulary does not describe a special class of facts but makes explicit the material-inferential commitments already implicit in ordinary concept-use. Lewis (1969) developed a convention-based account on which language is coordinated through community-level conventions. The framework reads both as picking up real social-coordinative features of language; whether the inferential and expressivist reading displaces the structural conditions or instead makes them explicit is the sharpest question this tradition puts to the account, and it is taken up directly at [§8.10.5](<8.10.5 What is Concluded.md>) rather than settled by fiat here.

The literature on language divides over Saussurean structuralism, Chomskyan generativism, Wittgensteinian use-theory, Fregean sense-reference, Kripkean direct reference, Davidsonian truth-conditional semantics, Quinean indeterminacy, Searle's symbol-grounding problem, the status of LLMs, Whorfian relativity, and inferentialist and conventionalist accounts. The framework commits to specific answers on each; they are taken up again at [§8.10.5](<8.10.5 What is Concluded.md>) after the structural account is in view.


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← [8.10 Language](<8.10 Language.md>) | [8.10.2 What is Required](<8.10.2 What is Required.md>) →
