Page 321 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

an 'occurrence' of a type: in the 'sentence type' 'Home, sweet home,' there are two occurrences of the 'word type' 'home,' and so there are two tokens of that word type in every token of the sentence type.
4. On the Primacy of One Over the Other
The history of semantics has seen significant swings in the importance attached to features of tokens beyond simply those of the expression types of which they are tokens. First there was nearly exclusive concern with formalized languages, in which all semantic features like reference, meaning, and truth attach to (or are determined by) expression types, and actual use of these expressions is irrelevant to semantic questions. The later Wittgenstein and 'ordinary language' phil-
osophers, who saw meaning of expression types as arising out of actual token uses of expressions in com- munication and other activities, took as the unit of investigation the token utterance, embedded in a rich conversational context (this tradition continues in the late twentieth century in the theory of speech acts). Successes in possible-world semantics for modal logics led in the 1960s and 1970s to renewed interest in type- driven semantics in which tokens often were ignored except for such obviously context-sensitive expres- sions as demonstratives. Much late twentieth-cen- tury work in semantics and pragmatics again emphasizes the primacy of the token, and the semantic importance of such complex features of context as salience, relevance, and mutual belief.
See also: Categories and Types.
TypeIToken Distinction
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