Introduction

Abstract Despite the considerable attention the topic of luck has received in ethics and epistemology, very little has been published in the philosophical literature overtly on linguistic luck. The essays collected here provide the first sustained examination of the diverse forms of linguistic luck, the mechanisms available to reduce the impact of linguistic luck, and how to cope with residual luck not eliminated by the causal, inferential, and intentional mechanisms which aim at its eradication. Causation, inference, and agency are amongst the primary vehicles of linguistic luck reduction, each having greater or lesser salience in a given domain of linguistic theory (syntax, semantics, pragmatics) and particular linguistic events. The essays to follow highlight a diverse range of luck reducing mechanisms that are relevant to different areas of linguistic theorizing. In addition to furthering the aims of linguistic theory, our inquiry is important because trust is important. Luck is generally no friend of trust, the two typically trend in opposing directions. While our inquiry into the nature and significance of linguistic luck will proceed autonomously, connections with moral and epistemic luck are always in mind.