FRANCIS JEFFRY PELLETIER and RICHMOND H. THOMASON TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY

A BibTeX-formatted bibliography of the first twenty-five years of Linguistics and Philosophy, with topic keywords, is available at www.eecs.umich.edu/∼rthomaso/l-and-p/. Rather than attempting an overview of what has been accomplished in the pages of this journal, or even a proper introduction to the papers in this issue that celebrate its twentyfifth anniversary, we instead try to present our own view of why each of the two subjects is profoundly and enduringly important to the other. The lack of italics in the title is intentional: we are concerned here more with Linguistics and Philosophy than with Linguistics and Philosophy, although of course the two are related. Our discussion begins with a general rationale, which we illustrate with two case studies, dealing with natural language metaphysics and with some philosophical issues in the semantics of words. The case studies are meant to provide examples of the sort of interesting, nontrivial interactions between Linguistics and Philosophy that create a special need and niche for Linguistics and Philosophy. They illustrate the many, and many unexpected, ways that the two fields affect one another. The role of L&P in fostering this interaction has been enormous and salutary for both fields.