Abstract

For the past few years, philosophers have heard about the exciting new work in linguistics centering about the contributions of Noam Chomsky and those sympathetic with his approach. The editors of the anthology share the conviction that this work points to a new and more adequate approach to the traditional problems of the philosophy of language which supersedes both positivist and ordinary-language approaches. They have done an excellent job in collecting some of the best papers of recent work in linguistics including papers of Quine, Harris, Chomsky, Klima, Halle, Ziff, Katz, Carnap, Church, Fodor, Lenneberg, and Stevens. The anthology provides an excellent opportunity for philosophers to assess the contribution and significance of recent developments in empirical linguistics.—R. J. B.