Grammatical Realism: An Analysis of Wittgenstein’s Concept of "Grammar" Cover Image

Grammatischer Realismus: Eine Analyse zum Wittgenstein' schen Begriff der „Grammatik“
Grammatical Realism: An Analysis of Wittgenstein’s Concept of "Grammar"

Author(s): Darius Persu
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language
Published by: Editura Universitaria Craiova
Keywords: Wittgenstein; philosophy of language; grammatical realism; rules; grammar; grammatical sentence; language games;

Summary/Abstract: This text deals with Wittgenstein's concept of “grammar”, which is one of the “key concepts” of his “Philosophical Investigations”. This term is interpreted here as a type of transcendental argument, i.e. as a regressive argument of the form: "In order to to explain why such and such (the observed - e.g. language as an institution) exists, one must presuppose that such and such (the unobserved – grammar) exists." The main thesis of the analysis proposed here is that Wittgenstein had to introduce in his philosophical investigations the concept of “grammar” as something predetermined in the perspective of “grammatical realism” to provide a theory of language with the aim of explaining the possibility of intersubjective language use, without having to fall back on any universal properties of language (in the sense of classical metaphysics).

  • Issue Year: 2/2023
  • Issue No: 52
  • Page Range: 111-127
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: German