Token and Type

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By the term pair token and type are used in the analytical philosophy of language of the language, such as words and phrases, and utterances in elements. The distinction between occurrence and type (in English token and type ) is made in the ontology in order to distinguish between a single occurrence and the general occurrence type.

For example, when asked how many digits there are in the 2200999 series, there are two correct answers. If you count the tokens (the occurrences), there are seven digits in the row. If, however, you count the types, there are only three, '2', '0' and '9'.

definition

The pair of terms was introduced by Charles S. Peirce in 1906:

“A common way to estimate the size of a text or a printed book is to count the words. There may be about twenty 'the' on a page and of course they are counted as twenty words. In another sense of the word 'word' there is only one word 'the' in the English language; and it is impossible for that kind of word to be visible on a page or be heard, as it is not a single thing or event. It doesn't exist, it only determines things that exist. I would like to call such a defined, characterizing form 'type'. For individual events that happen once and whose identity is limited to the one happening, or a single object or thing at a certain place and at a certain time, such an event or thing that is only significant where and when it appears is like this or that word on a single line on a single page of a single copy of a book, I would like to introduce the term 'token'. An undefined character like the tone of a voice cannot be called a type or a token. I suggest 'Tone' as a name for such a character. If you want to use a 'Type', it must be embodied as a 'Token', which should be a sign of the type and thus of the object that is identified by the type. "

- Charles S. Peirce : Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism , 1906, (CP 4.537) see also Token , Type )

philosophy

The distinction between tokens and types is important in various areas of philosophy , especially in philosophy of language , logic and ontology .

It also plays a role in the philosophy of mind . The question of what a mental state is can be understood on the one hand as a question of the state token, but also as a question of the type of state. While classical identity theory, for example, identifies types of mental states with types of neural states, Donald Davidson's anomalous monism only asserts an identity of the corresponding tokens.

linguistics

In structural linguistics, the terms are used to distinguish between specific linguistic utterances (tokens) and the abstract units of the meta-level (types) that they represent.

The sentence “ A monkey remains a monkey, even dressed in silk ” contains two token monkeys , but only one type.

The pair of terms serves to distinguish between etic and emic perspectives, or between langue and parole , at the word level . At the level of sounds, however, one speaks of phones vs. Phonemes , in the morphology of morphs vs. Morphemes , etc. Sometimes the pair of terms is also incorrectly used synonymously with the pair of lexeme and word form .

In quantitative linguistics and in quantitative stylistics , the type-token relation plays a major role, as it is used to characterize texts with regard to their vocabulary wealth.

Musicology

There are corresponding applications in the field of music theory .

typography

When printing with movable letters , the correspondence between type and token serves as a positive criterion for determining a typographic text:

“The decisive criterion that a typographically produced print must meet is that of the type identity of the letter forms that appear in the printed text . In other words: all letter forms appearing in the text must prove to be copies ('tokens') of one and the same letter type, precisely the type or letter that shows a reversed image of the printed letter. "

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert E. Brekle : Theprüfungingen consecration inscription from 1119. A palaeographic-typographical investigation [short summary], Scriptorium Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-937527-06-0 .

literature

Web links