What is the relation between philosophy and linguistics?
Philosophy and Linguistics both have to do with thinking about ideas. But their approaches are different:
- Philosophical theories try to answer big questions like "what does it mean to be human?" or "how should we live our lives?"; they involve thought experiments, arguments and critical analysis of various positions.
- Linguistic theory looks at how people use language naturally (i.e., without being philosophers), trying to understand why speakers choose certain expressions over others. It focuses on the way words combine into phrases and sentences in a natural manner, rather than on what these combinations might mean philosophically.