A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PHILOSOPHIES OF LANGUAGE UNDERPINNING (AND OPPOSING) CORPUS LINGUISTICS From Aristotle to Artificial Intelligence (2nd Edn.)

THIS VERSION IS OUTDATED. Please refer to the updated revised Version 2:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17998000

This volume/long essay traces the intertwined histories of linguistic and philosophical thought that shaped—and sometimes resisted—the emergence of corpus linguistics. From Aristotle’s conception of language as a tool for persuasion, through the different scepticisms of Plato and the Scholastics, through the systematicism of the Stoics (prefiguring the 19th Century), to Humboldt’s insight that language is a ‘formative organ of thought’, it follows how successive thinkers imagined the relationship between words, meaning and knowledge. It explores the empirical turn of the Enlightenment, the structural revolutions of the nineteenth century, and the ‘language-conscious’ philosophy of the twentieth. It concludes with reflections on Large Language Models and their cohabitation with CL/CaDS. It delves into the tensions between causal and teleological explanations, given that linguistics is both a 'hard' physical science, whose structures were caused by evolutionary pressures and a human science whose artefacts are designed with purposes in mind (though these drift and multiply). It is an adventure story of the sometimes bitter rivalry between the optimists, for whom language was a sort of ‘super-power’ and the pessimists who viewed it as at best flawed and treacherous, at worst dangerous – not forgetting the many ‘transparians’ for whom language was simply a window. Two shibboleths are the attitudes to metaphor and evaluation as action. Written for linguists, thinkers, lovers of wisdom (Sophos)of all kinds  and digital humanities alike, the book argues that corpus linguistics represents a continuation of a long epistemological project: using authentic language data to uncover ‘non-obvious’ meanings and to refine our understanding of mind, society and communication.

New topics presnted in the 2nd Ed, include:

·      Metaphorophobia in classical philosophy.

·      How and why CL can fruitfully cohabit and collaborate with AI/LLMs

·      Ontological and epistemological differences between CL, CaDS and LLMs. LLMs: just artefacts or self-organising organisms (Kant)?

·      How AI learns metaphorical usage and evaluation. Are there patterns of creative language (including humour) that AI can acquire then use?

·      CL as a physical and a human science: causality (Bacon) versus teleology (Aristotle)

·      CL/CaDS and the revenge of evaluation, from Hunston to evaluative cohesion.

partington.alan@gmail.com