Philosophy of Language is very important question in the study of linguistics.While philosophy generally explores issues related to the nature of the world and of the people, the philosophy of language explores the general nature of language and its relationship with the world and the human mind.Which perceives and describes the reality through language. In other words, the philosophy of language is concerned with the relationship between language, thought and reality.
Even in ancient times, people questioned since the relation between the shape of a word (e.g., dog) and the object indicated by that word (object: dog) was conventional, ie if it had been arbitrarily established by persons or if that report was natural, inherent and inseparable. The world’s languages are different in how to label the elements of reality (in English: {dog}, French: chien , German:Hund , Polish: pies , etc.), and this makes us lean toward a conventionality of languages.
The word dog is a common name in contrast to the word Antarctica (proper name); instead of referring to a single object (a specific continent), means (or highlights) an entire group, species or category of objects, which are all dogs existed, that exist, will exist, or might exist.
Always philosophers wonder if a category (or species group), understood as a set, is something real and independent of human perception or if only individual objects are real, while the categories; groups (universal notions) would only a creation of the mind, or exist only in language.
You Know, Philosophy Of Language Always Examine The Truth In Meanings Of the Words.
Regardless of whether the concept of meaning is accepted and what kind of realism attributed to the categories, we must recognize that many words have specific meanings and categories that they fall do not have defined boundaries. Surely words like large have meaning for the object to which they refer (a big dog against a big ant ). Even when we talk about a particular subject, the meaning is not real: it is not clear what should be the weight of a dog for it to be called “great.” The same problem arises with other words, for example, it is unclear how many blades of straw are needed to create a haystack or what should be long. This is an important issue because it affects the reliability of the language and the chance to make true statements about the world through it. In other words: they are true the following information?
The world’s languages differ not only for the sound and text input (eg English} {dog, polish pies , French chien , etc.), but also for the level of precision in presenting different elements of reality. Examples of this are different number of words that describe the basic colors (see Semantics ), for example in the language of the people of New Guinea Dani it is only mili (which includes all dark and cool colors like black, green and blue) and mola (warm and light colors like white, red and yellow). Across the Hungarian he has two words for the red and the Polish for the blue .
Also vary the words for family members. This often depends on the sex of the referent as brother and sister , but in other cultures age differences can be as important. Indonesian kakak {} has an older brother and adik refers to a younger brother, regardless of gender.In Indonesia, as in many Asian countries, the relative age is important in interpersonal relationships. The Hungarian on the other hand is distinguished by age and sex with Baty and OCS which refer respectively to a larger and younger brother, respectively, whileNover and hug refer to an older sister and a younger.
The differences are not only lexical but can also affect the grammar, such as verb tenses or gender of nouns. Nouns can be grouped into genres, including male, female and neutral, but there are systems that have more or less categories and some languages have no classification of gender. The arbitrariness of allocation of this kind can be seen in different kinds assigned to the same concept. Polishsun is neutral słońce {}, in German is feminine {} while Sonne is masculine in French ( le soleil) The kinds of Polish countries can be seen in the following map
The question is whether these differences affect the understanding of the world. The hypothesis according to which the structure of a specific language influences the way its users perceive the world is known as linguistic determinism (eg Humboldt, Sapir and Whorf).The research sought to prove or disprove aspects of linguistic determinism have produced ambiguous results.
Critics of determinism are asking whether the inability to translate a certain phrase from language X to language Y word for word, it means that it is not possible to express the same thought in two different languages.
That application also appears in specific communicative situations. The English, for example, requires that the speaker expresses the definiteness / indefiniteness of an object ( a dog against dog ) while the Polish no. You can say jakiś pies “a dog” or ten pies “that dog”, but you can always just say pies “dog”, an option not available in English. The question then is: when the Anglophone thinks of an object, thinks it explicitly as definite or indefinite?
A milder version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is known as linguistic relativism. Different languages have different images of the world contained in their grammar, vocabulary (regarding realia as the names of plants and animals in a given region) and in phraseology (as in Proverbs). They retain cultural elements both ancient and modern.
