Ludwig Wittgenstein'Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein' (ˈvɪtgənʃtaɪn,_-staɪn ; ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːzɛf 'joːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.
SemioticsSemiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning-making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional, such as a word uttered with a specific meaning; or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition.
SyntaxIn linguistics, syntax (ˈsɪntæks ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
Linguistic relativityThe idea of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis səˌpɪərnbspˈhwɔːrf , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus individuals' languages determine or shape their perceptions of the world. The hypothesis has long been controversial, and many different, often contradictory variations have existed throughout its history.
PragmaticsIn linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA). Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation, as well as nonverbal communication.
Gottlob FregeFriedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (ˈfreɪgə; ˈɡɔtloːp ˈfreːɡə; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers.
ReferenceA reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to refer to the second object. It is called a name for the second object. The next object, the one to which the first object refers, is called the referent of the first object. A name is usually a phrase or expression, or some other symbolic representation. Its referent may be anything – a material object, a person, an event, an activity, or an abstract concept.
Lexical semanticsLexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word. The units of analysis in lexical semantics are lexical units which include not only words but also sub-words or sub-units such as affixes and even compound words and phrases. Lexical units include the catalogue of words in a language, the lexicon.
Principle of compositionalityIn semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. The principle is also called Frege's principle, because Gottlob Frege is widely credited for the first modern formulation of it. However, the principle has never been explicitly stated by Frege, and arguably it was already assumed by George Boole decades before Frege's work.
Prototype theoryPrototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. It emerged in 1971 with the work of psychologist Eleanor Rosch, and it has been described as a "Copernican revolution" in the theory of categorization for its departure from the traditional Aristotelian categories.
