Language Acquisition

The ability to communicate in a specific language like Chinese typically indicates that the speaker understands the language. A counterexample to this belief is John Searle’s Chinese room experiment. It has been shown in this experiment that in certain circumstances we can communicate with a Chinese speaker without intuitively acknowledging that the Chinese language is understood in the conversation. In the present paper, we aim to present another counterexample showing that, in certain circumstances, we can communicate using a specific language (...) by converting its words to those of our natural language, and understand what is expressed using the language without understanding it. Using a specific conversion process introduced in the present paper, symbols and even sounds of a language like the Chinese language lose their original function and act as a tool to express one’s natural language. To better understand this, imagine the English language has another writing or phonological system in addition to its current writing system. (shrink)

The origin and development of consciousness is poorly understood. Although it is clearly a naturalistic phenomenon evolved through Darwinian evolution, explaining it in terms of physicochemical, neural, or symbolic mechanisms remains elusive. Here I propose that two steps had to be taken in its evolution. First, living systems evolved an intrinsic goal-directedness by internalizing Darwinian fitness as a self-estimated fitness. The self-estimated fitness participates in a feedback loop that effectively produces intrinsic meaning in the organism. Second, animals with advanced nervous (...) systems evolved a special form of communication that modifies the way each partner estimates fitness. The resulting change in intrinsic meaning is experienced subjectively as a primary form of consciousness. This primary form is subsequently used to generate, partly through internalized dialogue, more complex forms of consciousness, such as consciousness of the natural and social worlds, consciousness of the self, and language-dependent forms of consciousness. An updated version of the theory in this paper can be found as Chapter 12 ('Consciousness') in my book 'The estimator theory of life and mind: how agency and consciousness can emerge', see VANTET-8 at philpapers . (shrink)

What is the relationship between the claim that generics articulate psychologically primitive generalizations and the claim that they exhibit a unique form of context sensitivity? This paper maintains that the two claims are compatible. It develops and defends an overlooked form of contextualism grounded in the idiosyncrasies of System 1 thought.

The style, tone and tenor of the New Testament writers are unique and exceptional. Jesus of Nazareth, Hebraic roots, Old Testament literature, oral tradition, Hellenistic influence, Roman governance, 1st century socio-politics, and multifarious linguistic elements combined to immortalize their literary records and make them indelible in the minds of contemplative readers. This book acknowledges previous work and seeks to connect the thoughts gleaned from them to seminal ideas that have their locus in the inquiry of how language can influence thought (...) and vice-versa. The information has been sourced from the fields of religion, biblical studies, linguistics, English literature, grammar learning, geo-politics, philology, psychology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence as they have to do with thought, language, and society. The carefully quoted and paraphrased opinions of writers from the related disciplines since the fourth century BCE are presented here. However, the volume reflects the very marked influence of 20th century thinkers who have had the benefit of perusing the work of their predecessors and 21st century pioneers who have at their disposal ultra-modern technology, computing power, and easy access to a global community to which the ideas may be applied for comparative analysis. (shrink)

Many theorists assume that a request is sincere if the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act requested. I argue that this assumption predicts an implausible mismatch between sincere assertions and sincere directives and needs to be revised. I present an alternative view, according to which directive utterances can only be sincere if they are self-directed. Other-directed directives, however, can be genuine or fake, depending on whether the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act in question. Finally, I (...) argue that this new perspective opens the door to a satisfying theory of authentic expression, for both assertive and directive utterances. Authenticity consists in the combination of genuine and sincere speech, for example, in the case of assertion, when speakers assert something which they both believe (sincerity) and want the addressee to believe (genuineness). (shrink)

The most important stage of the sound phenomenon for children covers the time that starts from the mother's womb and continues until the school period. A child starting school (6:5 or 7 years old) is just learning to write. However, he acquired the language/s/ almost entirely thanks to the sound in the mentioned period. In this respect, the processing of language and sound in the brain of newborn babies becomes important. The language acquisition level of newborns may vary in terms (...) of such reasons as genetics, ability, and frequency of exposure, environmental factors, and whether they are physically and mentally healthy or not. This study deals with the question of what kind of a connection is there between the phenomenon of sound, especially the sound of music, and the acquisition of two languages in early childhood. In short, the subjects of language acquisition and musical sound in early childhood have been investigated in the literature with a qualitative method. Another question is how do the two languages acquired in early childhood stay with each other in a developmental relation. In the study, it was understood that there is not a single result from the studies on children grown up monolingual or bilingual in early childhood. The opinion that the sooner one or two languages are learned in early childhood (usually by exposure to the sound) the better the acquisition would be is outweighed, though there are different opinions about the results of the scientists. In addition, since it was concluded that there is a developmentally parallel relationship between the sound of music and the acquisition of language by newborns, it means that ontology gives us the summary of phylogenesis. (shrink)

This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as Tigers have stripes and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as All tigers have stripes was acquired in Spanish-speaking children of two different age groups (4/5-year-olds and 8/9-year-olds), and then compare these results with those of adults. The starting point of this research was the semantic distinction between (...) GS and UQS in that the former admit exceptions, unlike the latter. On the other hand, several authors have observed a Generic overgeneralization effect (GOG) consisting in allowing for UQS to be felicitous in the face of exceptions, thus proposing that this “error” stems from GS being defaults (simpler, more easily learned and processed). In the current paper we aimed to test the “Generics as Default” (GaD) hypothesis by comparing GS and UQS in three different age ranges. Our data show that, overall, the accuracy of GS is greater than the accuracy of UQS. Moreover, we also confirm a hypothesized interaction between age and NP type (GS vs UQS). Further, we present several data points that are not predicted by the GaD, including an observed decline in the accuracy of GS in the older group of children as well as in adults, and that children fail at rejecting statements that are not considered to be true generalizations. (shrink)

In the globalizing world foreign language learning is becoming more and more important. This case leads to new developments in language learning research. The purpose of this study is to depict whether the second language learning would occur better in the childhood or later. In other words to investigate the question of in which period of bilingualism it will be better. In order to answer this question, important sources in the linguistic field, related to the topic, were highlighted. The important (...) researches and theories mentioned in the literature have been examined, evaluated, information about the first and second language learning has been given and the subject has been discussed from the scientific point of view. In this context, it has been understood that many reasons exist affecting the level of proficiency of preand post- 12 year's language learning (in mono-, bi-, tri-, quadra- or multi-, lingualism) such as age, brain function, individual differences, ambience differences; social, political, economic background and how to regard the language. The idea that bilingualism after the critical period (around the age of 12) could not be as that of the childhood has been gained weight, due to the system differences between two languages, especially the difficulties in intoning and pronouncing. (shrink)

Prepositions as function words and single monomorphemic words are the most basic words of the human language, especially in the context of maintaining daily life. They are probably the first lexes/words entered to the human’s linguistic repertoire, as their requirements in the language are so essential. Prepositions shows various relationships between lexes or phrases in sentences. Among these relationships time, points, position, direction and various degrees of mental or emotional attitudes seem to be significant. The purpose of the research is (...) try to reveal what kind of challenges English prepositions have for the learners and also to confirm if they are as difficult as some linguists have stated before. Another purpose is to find out which features are more difficult among all their entity properties. The results of this study disclose that English prepositions possess very complex structures, different meanings and an associating duty of various types of part of speeches. In particular, those that construct the phrasal verbs require great effort for learning due to the loss of the meaning (sometimes partially, sometimes completely) they undergo. It has been understood that their properties such as steadily changing meaning and function make them quite difficult elements for learners of English. (shrink)

Este escrito pretende aproximarse al anti-fundacionalismo defendido por Stanley Fish y que tiene su manifestación más clara en su teoría literaria. Por ello, iniciaremos, primero, por contextualizar la obra de Fish y, segundo, examinaremos algunos aspectos relevantes de su teoría literaria y su relación con el anti-fundacionalismo, así como algunas de sus consecuencias epistemológicas derivadas de esta postura teórica.

In this chapter, I critically examine two of the main approaches to colour categorization in cognitive science: the perceptual salience theory and linguistic relativism. I then turn to reviewing several decades of psychological research on colour categorical perception (CP). A careful assessment of relevant findings suggests that most of the experimental effects that have been understood in terms of CP actually fall on the cognition side of the perception-cognition divide: they are effects of colour language, for example, on memory or (...) decision-making. (shrink)

This chapter presents a conception of understanding where understanding emerges out of the joint experience of conversation. On this conception, understanding requires more than the pre-reflective acquisition of shared social meanings – a conception of understanding historically highlighted by existential phenomenologists. Beyond this, it requires what occurs in genuine conversation, namely, that one put one’s pre-reflective social meanings at risk in the process of critical self-reflection. Drawing from the hermeneutic phenomenology of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I argue that conversation is that joint (...) experience that gives rise to such critical self-reflection and that it is conversation’s play-structure in particular that makes it a source of understanding in this sense. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the difficulty of acquiring phenomenological terms by examining Carnap’s and Derrida’s criticisms of phenomenological speech; their criticisms show that any account of how phenomenological speech is acquired must clarify its distinction from ordinary speech about things while not falling prey to an esoteric separation. The chapter then reviews the way Husserl, Scheler, and Heidegger offer “indication” as the way to distinguish but not separate the one and the other, and it argues that indication, even with the support (...) of analogy, metaphor, and metonym, suffers from Quinean indeterminacy and therefore requires some other resources for its successful enactment. Finally, the chapter outlines a novel solution to the problem of phenomenological speech by approaching the question as one of genesis and acquisition: ordinary language embeds certain experiential terms, such as “presence” and “absence,” that, when inflected, introduce the learner into the transcendental dimension of experience. The chapter demonstrates that the question of language learning or acquisition is necessary for unraveling the nature of phenomenological language and clarifying its relation to ordinary speech. (shrink)

I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms of (...) ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk. (shrink)

En la presente tesis de titulación se ha propuesto investigar el concepto de intention-reading de Michael Tomasello con el fin de aclarar su caracterización dentro del contexto de su teoría de adquisición del lenguaje. En segundo lugar, tomando como base lo anterior, se quiere identificar los supuestos que adopta Tomasello en la descripción de este proceso para así poder relacionar su teoría del aprendizaje del lenguaje con alguna arquitectura cognitiva. La motivación principal para escoger este tópico es precisar la relación (...) de antagonismo que es ampliamente aceptada entre la teoría de aprendizaje de lenguaje de Tomasello y la de Chomsky. Se tendrán presentes las siguientes preguntas para guiar la indagación: ¿En qué grado es una alternativa a la gramática universal la teoría de Tomasello? ¿Es acaso una teoría alternativa radical a lo que propone Chomsky siendo posible agruparla dentro de una concepción encarnada de la cognición? O ¿Es Tomasello una alternativa a Chomsky, pero dentro de un paradigma clásico de la cognición? (shrink)

Paul Pietroski has developed a powerful minimalist and internalist alternative to standard compositional semantics, where meanings are identified with instructions to fetch or assemble human concepts in specific ways. In particular, there appears to be no need for Fregean Function Application, as natural language composition only involves processes of combining monadic or dyadic concepts, and Pietroski’s theory can then, allegedly, avoid both singular reference and truth conditions. He also has a negative agenda, purporting to show, roughly, that the vocabulary of (...) standard truth conditional semantics is far too powerful to plausibly describe the linguistic competence of mere human minds. In this paper, I explain some of the basics of Pietroski’s compositional semantics and argue that his major objection to standard compositionality is inconclusive, because a similar argument can be mounted against his own minimalist theory. I argue that we need a clear distinction between the language of the theorist---theoretical notation---and the language whose nature we are trying to explain. The theoretical notation should in fact be as expressively powerful as possible. It does not follow that the notation cannot be used to explain mere human linguistic competence, even if human minds are limited in various ways. (shrink)

The contents of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism, the Sabdabrahma Siddhanta and Shaddarsanas will be discussed to present the true meaning of individual’s identity and I. The influence of spirituality contained in Upanishadic insight in the development of Sanskrit language structure, Indian culture, and individual identity formation will be developed. The cultural and psychological aspects of a civilization on the formation of its language structure and prominence given to various parts of speech and vice versa will be touched upon. These (...) aspects will be also compared and contrasted with German, French, Telugu and Hindi and their respective influence on cultural and identity formation and vice versa. A cognitive science interpretation of advaita and dvaita phases of mind and bhakti and vibhakti modes of language acquisition and communication in terms of physics and electronics will be given and be clubbed to present an inclusive and comprehensive modern scientific and social scientific understanding and interpretation of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism and rest of current theistic and atheistic awareness of I and its spiritual, linguistic, cognitive scientific and rationalistic ideas and opinions. The use of this study for national integration and oneness of Indians will be highlighted. (shrink)

У пропонованій статті зроблено аналіз власноручних розписок шляхти Подільського воєводства у поборовому реєстрі з 1563 року і з’ясовано, який був рівень письменності та якими мовами користувалися шляхтичі у середині XVI століття. У XVI столітті шляхта поступово почала відходити від традиційного способу життя — військової служби. Набуття нових навичок, серед яких і вміння писати, сприяло новим напрямкам кар’єри — посіданню різноманітних урядів. Розвиток судочинства та потреба заможній шляхті вести облік своїх маєтків, створили попит на осіб, що вміють писати. Законодавча вимога особисто (...) посвідчити своє майно дає у руки дослідників унікальний документ щодо вміння шляхти писати. Серед 237 наявних у поборовому реєстрі розписок ми маємо справу з використанням трьох мов — латини, польської та руської у різних комбінаціях (де мова розписки і підпису може збігатися або ні). Не завжди шляхтич умів написати розписку власноручно, почасти його вміння писати було елементарним, а саме більш-менш вправно написати своєї ім’я та прізвище. Переважна більшість розписок написані латиною та польською, одна руською. Якщо представити наявні варіації мов, де на першому місці мова розписки, а на другому мова підпису, то у відсотках це виглядає так: лат., лат. — 57,54% випадків; лат., без підпису — 3,36%; лат., пол. — 5,04%; лат., рус. — 1,68%; лат., лат. + рус. — 1,26%; пол., пол. — 15,12%; пол., без підпису — 1,26%; пол., лат. — 1,26%; пол., рус. — 0,42%; рус., рус. — 0,42%. Серед осіб, що вміли писати переважали заможні та середньозаможні шляхтичі, урядники земського та ґродського судів, писарі неґродових замків (Скала, Зіньків), урядники, адміністратори маєтків та писарі неґродових старост та заможних землевласників, священики католицької та православної церкви. Один власноручний підпис залишила Анна Надольська, єдина жінка серед усіх платників побору. Специфікою Подільського воєдства була мала кількість осіб, що вміли писати, що пов’язано із загальною кількістю населення та шляхти зокрема, а також використання на письмі трьох мов — латини, як урядової, польської та руської. (shrink)

Ethnographic study of Hippo Family Club, a foreign language learning club in Japan with chapters elsewhere, reveals a critique of foreign language teaching in Japanese schools and in the commercial English conversation industry. Club members contrast their own learning methods, which they view as “natural language acquisition”, with the formal study of grammar, which they see as uninteresting and ineffective. Rather than evaluating either the Hippo approach to learning or the teaching methods they criticize, however, this paper considers the ways (...) of thinking about language that club members come to share. Members view the club as a transnational organization that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. Language learning connects the club members to a cosmopolitan world beyond the club, even before they interact with speakers of the languages they are learning. The analysis of club members’ ideologies of language and language learning illuminates not only the pragmatics of language use, but practices and outcomes of socialization and shared social structures. (shrink)

Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human (...) responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that’s often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what’s involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it’s within a socio-linguistic community, and that community’s practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against a variety (...) of philosophical criticisms, new and old, and argue that the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument continues to deserve its guiding role in the study of language and the mind. (shrink)