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On the misuse of the notion of ‘abduction’ in linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2002

GUY DEUTSCHER
GUY DEUTSCHER
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
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Abstract

‘Abduction’, a concept from the philosophy of Charles Peirce, has become extremely popular in linguistics in the last three decades. This article argues that the interpretation of abduction in (historical) linguistics is based on a critical misunderstanding: it relies on an aborted model, which was rejected by Peirce himself, and it conflates two incompatible frameworks (Peirce's early and late ideas), to create a picture that is entirely incoherent. In consequence, it puts linguists directly at odds with mainstream practice in philosophy and science. Moreover, as currently interpreted, the term ‘abductive change’ is neither adequate nor necessary for classifying linguistic innovations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , November 2002 , pp. 469 - 485
Copyright
2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Reviel Netz, Jane Heal, Peter Lipton, Peter Matthews, Anette Rosenbach, Jan Hendrik Schmidt, Theo Vennemann and three referees for the Journal of Linguistics for many helpful comments on a previous draft of this article. All references to Peirce's writings are given to his (posthumously) collected papers (Peirce 1931–1966), in the standard format: Volume.Paragraph.