Abstract

This note takes issue with the claim that language-specific descriptive categories and crosslinguistic comparative concepts are different “kinds of things” (Haspelmath, 2018). Against the backdrop of Eugenio Coseriu’s epistemology of the language sciences it is argued that the general concepts used to make comparisons between languages are manifestations of potentially universal categories, which fall within the purview of linguistic intuition. In this sense, the relationship between categories of language and comparative concepts of linguistics reflects the creativity of language as enérgeia, which is a “synthetic a priori” in the Kantian sense.

Details

Title
A Note on Descriptive Categories and Comparative Concepts in Linguistics
Author
Klaas Willems 7-16
Section
Linguistics and Philosophy
Publication year
2024
Publication date
2024
Publisher
Universitatea Danubius Galati
ISSN
18447562
e-ISSN
20690398
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan
ProQuest document ID
3155709040
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.