The Role of Philosophy of Science in Quantitative Linguistics

Abstract

Abstract The paper aims to evaluate the role of the philosophy of science in contemporary quanti-tative linguistics. The primary goal is the reflection of the scientific methods and models of scientific explanations (Köhler 1986, 2012) used in quantitative linguistics. The paper shows that the current philosophy of science has adopted some new approaches to ex-planation that are conducive to quantitative linguistics (Craver, Darden 2013, Eck, Mennes 2016). Above all, the philosophy of science offers new models of non-causal explanations (Reutlinger, Saatsi 2018; Lange 2017). The paper’s primary goal is to propose a new topo-logical model of explanation in system-theoretical linguistics, following Kostić’s (2019a) and Huneman’s (2018) approaches. This model of explanation overcomes various difficul-ties of functional explanation, such as the nature of the structural axiom and the func-tional equivalents. Simultaneously, it establishes a non-causal form of linguistic explana-tion which builds on the previous analysis of quantitative linguists (Andres 2009; Ferrer-i-Cancho, Solé 2003; Hřebíček 2002).