The dominant tradition in analytic philosophy of language views reference as paradigmatically enabled by the acquisition of words from other speakers. Via chains of transmission, these words connect the referrer to the referent. Such a picture assumes the notion of a word as a stable mapping between sound and meaning. Utterances are constructed out of such stable mappings. While this picture of language is both intuitive and historically distinguished, various trends and programs that have developed over the last few decades in theoretical linguistics suggest an alternative. According to these approaches, the word, conceived of as a linguistic ‘building block’, has no special theoretical significance. While natural language systems generate structures mapping sounds onto meanings, they need not do so by composing elements which themselves specify such mappings. I shall describe some of these developments, and show how they pose a problem for traditional philosophical views of language and communication, before identifying an alternative approach to reference which does not rely on this common-sense picture of words.

中文翻译：

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参考和形态*

语言分析哲学的主流传统认为，指称是通过从其他说话者那里获取单词而范式地实现的。通过传输链，这些词将引用者与所指对象联系起来。这样的图片假定单词的概念是声音和含义之间的稳定映射。话语是由这种稳定的映射构成的。虽然这种语言图景既直观又历史悠久，但过去几十年理论语言学中发展起来的各种趋势和方案提出了另一种选择。根据这些方法，被视为语言“积木”的词没有特殊的理论意义。当自然语言系统生成将声音映射到意义的结构时，他们不需要通过组合本身指定此类映射的元素来这样做。我将描述其中的一些发展，并展示它们如何对传统的语言和交流哲学观点提出问题，然后再确定一种不依赖于这种常识性文字图片的替代方法。