Philosophy of Linguistics, Miscellaneous

The Holy Scriptures can be considered a specific kind of normative texts, whose use to assess practical moral cases requires interpretation. In the field of ethics, this interpretative problem results in the necessity of bridging the gap between the normative source – moral precepts – and the specific cases. In the history of the Church, this problem was the core of the so-called casuistry, namely the decision-making practice consisting in applying the Commandments and other principles of the Holy Scriptures to (...) specific cases or moral problems. By taking into account the sin of lying, this paper argues that casuistic texts reveal an extremely sophisticated interpretative method, grounded on “pragmatic” contextual and communicative considerations and argumentative structures that resemble the ones used in legal interpretation. These works show how the underspecified biblical text expressing an abstract norm was enriched pragmatically by completing it and modulating its meaning so that it could be used to draw a conclusion in a specific context on a specific case. The mutual interdependence between biblical interpretation, pragmatics, and argumentation sheds light on a much broader phenomenon, namely the pragmatic nature of argumentation. (shrink)

Este manuscrito es una fiel transcripción de la entrevista que se realizó al doctor Gilberto Sánchez Cabezas, miembro de la Academia Chilena de la Lengua. La información que brindó el académico en este intercambio de preguntas fue esencial para tener un panorama de cómo fluctúa una investigación medular de las lenguas originarias o aborígenes de su país. Asimismo, hizo algunas precisiones en función de las traducciones de escritores canónicos que existen en lenguas proteiformes y cómo estas son plasmadas con modificaciones (...) que podrían alterar en demasía el contenido. Para ello, el académico usa con frecuencia algunos ejemplos de palabras quechuas, aimaras o castellanas con sus respectivos significados, además de citar fragmentos de autores como Paul Verlaine, Attila József, García Lorca, Goethe y Homero, con la volición de que se corrobore la traslación semántica y fonológica. (shrink)

Victoria Espinosa Santos es miembro de la Academia Chilena de la Lengua desde 2017 y forma parte de la Comisión de Lexicografía. Esta entrevista, realizada de forma virtual el 6 de julio de 2021, se concentra en los siguientes temas: las variaciones del español de América, el rol de las lenguas indígenas en el español de Chile, el trabajo de las academias de la Lengua Española, el rol de las academias en relación con la lingüística y la literatura.

What connection is there between linguistic sounds and meaning? The present study claims that there is no such connection, and that linguistic sounds are the same as meaning. It is traditionally accepted that there is an arbitrary association between linguistic sounds and meaning. In the present paper, drawing from the concept of language authority for mind, I will talk about a distinction between live time of understanding - in which linguistic sounds are produced and understood - and non-live or historical (...) time of understanding. Through making this distinction, I will show that in live time of understanding, assuming any relationship between the mental state of linguistic sounds and that of meaning is inadequate, and that the best way to explain why linguistic sounds are understood instantly and effortlessly as soon as they are heard is to imagine that linguistic sounds are the same as meaning or that at least we are only faced with a single sound-meaning mental state. In addition, making a comparison between hearing linguistic sounds and seeing objects helps us consider linguistic sounds the same as meaning in the context of live time of understanding. (shrink)

María José Rincón González nació en Sevilla (España) y reside en República Dominicana desde 1992. Es miembro de número de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (ADL) desde el 2011 y directora del Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía. Asimismo, es miembro correspondiente de la Real Academia Española (RAE) y miembro del consejo asesor de Fundéu Guzmán Ariza. Con respecto a su formación superior, es doctora en Filología por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) y máster en Lexicografía por (...) la Universidad de Sevilla y la UNED. Ha participado en congresos internacionales y ha contribuido en las ediciones de diccionarios del idioma español. Entre sus publicaciones de artículos, se encuentran las que pertenecen al Diario Libre y el Boletín de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua, entre otros textos, tales como “La antroponimia femenina dominicana (1945-1995)” (2002), “El Diccionario de la lengua” (2013), “Presentación del Diccionario de americanismos de la ASALE” (2013), “Variantes dialectales del léxico dominicano en el Diccionario de americanismos” (2016), “La lematización de variantes gráficas en el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y “El Diccionario de criollismos, primer diccionario dominicano” (2020). De igual modo, ha publicado en libros y capítulos de libros. Entre ellos se encuentran el Diccionario del español dominicano (2013), “El nacimiento de un nuevo diccionario: el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y De la eñe a la zeta (2019). (shrink)

In this paper, we use concepts, structure and tools from argumentation theory to show how conversational implicatures are triggered by conflicts of presumptions. Presumptive implicatures are shown to be based on defeasible forms of inference used in conditions of lack of knowledge, including analogical reasoning, inference to the best explanation, practical reasoning, appeal to pity, and argument from cause. Such inferences are modelled as communicative strategies to knowledge gaps that shift the burden of providing the missing contrary evidence to the (...) other party in a dialogue. Through a series of illustrative examples, we show how such principles of inference are based on common knowledge about the ordinary course of events shared by participants in a structured dialogue setting in which they take turns putting forward and responding to speech acts. (shrink)

En esta entrevista se resolvieron las interrogantes formuladas y orientadas a la preservación de la lengua castellana en Hispanoamérica. En principio, se abordaron tres temas fundamentales derivados de esta propuesta: la escritura, la investigación y la publicidad. Con el primer tópico, se discernió la función de las normativas, los diccionarios y los manuales elaborados por la Real Academia Española. Su intervención es enjundiosa, ya que direcciona al lector y académico al perfeccionamiento de su lenguaje, con la finalidad de que no (...) reincida en errores gramaticales. El segundo rubro abarca la investigación. Esta fue destacada porque facilita la interacción de los hablantes de la lengua castellana con las metodologías que se instauran para configurar un lenguaje totémico. Además, se asume que la única manera de difundir y contribuir a ese conocimiento sería por medio de las publicaciones científicas. La tercera variante consiste en cómo se inserta esta inquietud en torno a la lengua castellana en los ámbitos publicitarios. Esto es neurálgico por su audiencia limitada y el desinterés de respaldo por los Gobiernos. Frente a ello, consideré que el Dr. Ignacio Bosque Muñoz era la persona idónea para confrontar esta realidad sobre el castellano. Su rol importante en la RAE y la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE) lo amerita, así como sus publicaciones orientadas al estudio del idioma con enfoques gramaticales. Con su interacción, la volición de este trabajo se evidenciará con la explicación del panorama vigente de la lengua y su preservación, como cuando uno desea comprender el Quijote, entender las contribuciones gramaticales y lexicales de la RAE y la ASALE o cuestionar la proliferación del idioma desde los medios de comunicación. La auscultación de esas oscilaciones será el aporte de esta entrevista. (shrink)

Ysabel Ydelsa Delgado Del Águila nació el 23 de diciembre de 1990 en Lima (Perú). Estudió la carrera de Traducción e Interpretación en el Instituto de Educación Superior Tecnológico Privado Cibertec, donde se especializó en el aprendizaje de las lenguas del inglés y el portugués y se graduó con una tesis dedicada al escritor portugués José Saramago. Actualmente, trabaja como traductora freelance y es gerente de operaciones en la filial Recife (Brasil) de VFS Global para la misión de Canadá y (...) Reino Unido. Esta organización se encarga del trámite de documentos administrativos y de cobranza para la adquisición de una visa o un permiso temporal en esos países en condición de turista. Durante el tiempo de capacitación de sus empleados, la entidad les brinda la oportunidad de establecer vínculos educativos con las universidades de la India. Ha estudiado el idioma francés en la Alianza Francesa y el italiano en el Instituto Italiano de Cultura. Además, continúa sus estudios de Administración en la Universidad Cruzeiro do Sul (São Paulo, Brasil). (shrink)

Programming artificial intelligence to make fairness assessments of texts through top-down rules, bottom-up training, or hybrid approaches, has presented the challenge of defining cross-cultural fairness. In this paper a simple method is presented which uses vectors to discover if a verb is unfair or fair. It uses already existing relational social ontologies inherent in Word Embeddings and thus requires no training. The plausibility of the approach rests on two premises. That individuals consider fair acts those that they would be willing (...) to accept if done to themselves. Secondly, that such a construal is ontologically reflected in Word Embeddings, by virtue of their ability to reflect the dimensions of such a perception. These dimensions being: responsibility vs. irresponsibility, gain vs. loss, reward vs. sanction, joy vs. pain, all as a single vector. The paper finds it possible to quantify and qualify a verb as fair or unfair by calculating the cosine similarity of the said verb’s embedding vector against FairVec—which represents the above dimensions. We apply this to Glove and Word2Vec embeddings. Testing on a list of verbs produces an F1 score of 95.7, which is improved to 97.0. Lastly, a demonstration of the method’s applicability to sentence measurement is carried out. (shrink)

Past work has shown systematic differences between Easterners' and Westerners' intuitions about the reference of proper names. Understanding when these differences emerge in development will help us understand their origins. In the present study, we investigate the referential intuitions of English- and Chinese-speaking children and adults in the U.S. and China. Using a truth-value judgment task modeled on Kripke's classic Gödel case, we find that the cross-cultural differences are already in place at age seven. Thus, these differences cannot be attributed (...) to later education or enculturation. Instead, they must stem from differences that are present in early childhood. We consider alternate theories of reference that are compatible with these findings and discuss the possibility that the cross-cultural differences reflect differences in perspective-taking strategies. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that causation is to be explicated in terms of a kind of dependence between cause and effect. These “dependence” theories are opposed by “production” accounts which hold that there is some more fundamental causal “oomph”. A wide range of experimental research on everyday causal judgments seems to indicate that ordinary people operate primarily with a dependence-based notion of causation. For example, people tend to say that absences and double preventers are causes. We argue that the impression that (...) commonsense causal discourse is largely dependence-based is the result of focusing on a very narrow class of causal verbs. Almost all of the vignette-based experimental work on causal judgment has been prosecuted using the word “cause”. But much ordinary causal discourse involves special causal verbs, such as “burn” and “crack”. We find that these verbs display a quite different pattern from the verb “cause”. For instance, for absences and double preventers (Studies 1-3), we find that while people are inclined to say that X caused Y to burn, turn, crack or start, they are less inclined to think that X burned, turned, cracked or started Y. In Study 4, we find that for chains involving a distal and proximal event, people are inclined to say that the distal event is not a special cause of the outcome, though it is a “cause” of the outcome. Together, we find a surprising double dissociation between “cause” and a stock of special causal verbs. We conclude by suggesting that much commonsense causal judgment, which heavily trades in special causal verbs, might be better captured by production-based accounts of causation. (shrink)

The manuscript presents a summary of the results of the linguistic semantics study of Covid-19 related quarantine. Research conducted on a sample of Russian speaking Ukrainians. Found content and structure of the respective discursive field. Described features of inter-discourse connections. Established that the actualization of some discourses is accompanied by the deactivation of others, what makes quarantine semantics biased. Also, it was suggested that some of the discourses are indirectly positively associated and form the semantic core of the quarantine concept.

The expression “linguistic Kantianism” is widely used to refer to ideas about thought and cognition being determined by language — a conception characteristic of 20th century analytic philosophy. In this article, I conduct a comparative analysis of Kant’s philosophy and views falling under the umbrella expression “linguistic Kantianism.” First, I show that “linguistic Kantianism” usually presupposes a relativistic conception that is alien to Kant’s philosophy. Second, I analyse Kant’s treatment of linguistic determinism and the place of his ideas in the (...) 18th century intellectual milieu and provide an overview of relevant contemporary literature. Third, I show that authentic Kantianism and “linguistic Kantianism” belong to two different types of transcendentalism, to which I respectively refer as the “transcendentalism of the subject” and the “transcendentalism of the medium.” The transcendentalism of the subject assigns a central role to the faculties of the cognising subject. The transcendentalism of the medium assigns the role of an “active” element neither to the external world nor to the faculties of the cognising subject, but to something in between — language, in the case of “linguistic Kantianism.” I conclude that the expression “linguistic Kantianism” can be misleading when it comes to the origins of this theory. It would be more appropriate to refer to this theory by the expression “linguistic transcendentalism,” thus avoiding an incorrect reference to Kant. (shrink)

The changes known as the loss of inflexions in English (11th- 15th centuries, included) were prompted with the introduction of a new mode of thinking. The mode of thinking, for the Anglo-Saxons, was a dynamic way of conceiving of things. Things were considered events happening. With the contacts of Anglo-Saxons with, first, the Romano-British; second, the introduction of Christianity; and finally with the Norman invasion, their dynamic way of thinking was confronted with the static conception of things coming from the (...) Mediterranean. The history of English from the 11th to the 15th century meant the introduction, confrontation and adoption of a new mental conception of things, the static way of conceiving of things, both modes of thinking defining the language today. (shrink)

The actions of perceiving and grouping are the two that the human being carries out when thinking in entities different from himself. In this article “The Mirror Problem” and “The Peer Problem”, which correspond respectively to self-perception and the perception of others, are studied. By solving these two problems, the thinker arrives to the following conclusions: “I exist” and “I am”.

A distinction is drawn among predicates, open sentences (or open formulas), and general terms, including general-term phrases. Attaching a copula, perhaps together with an article, to a general term yields a predicate. Predicates can also be obtained through lambda-abstraction on an open sentence. The issue of designation and semantic content for each type of general expression is investigated. It is argued that the designatum of a general term is a universal, e.g., a kind, whereas the designatum of a predicate is (...) a class (or its characteristic function) and the designatum of an open sentence is a truth-value. Predicates and open sentences are therefore typically non-rigid designators. It is argued further that certain general terms, including phrases, are invariably rigid designators, whereas certain others (general definite descriptions) are typically non-rigid. Suitable semantic contents for predicates, open sentences, and general terms are proposed. Consequences for the thesis of compositionality are drawn. (shrink)

I argue that the dispute between two leading theories of interpretation of legal texts, textual originalism and textual evolutionism, depends on the false presupposition that changes in the way a word is used necessarily require a change in the word’s meaning. Semantic externalism goes a long way towards reconciling these views by showing how a word’s semantic properties can be stable over time, even through vicissitudes of usage. I argue that temporal externalism can account for even more semantic stability, however. (...) Temporal externalism is the theory that the content of an utterance at time t may be determined by developments in linguistic usage subsequent to t. If this semantic theory is correct, then the originalist and evolutionist positions effectively collapse. Originalism is correct in that the original meaning of the text is the meaning that is binding on jurists, but evolutionism is vindicated, as it is the current practices and standards that determine the meaning the text now has, and has always had. Objections to temporal externalism, and to its application to the interpretation of legal texts, are considered and addressed. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to discuss a metaphysical framework within which to understand “standard linguistic entities” (SLEs), such as words, sentences, phonemes, and other entities routinely employed in linguistic theory. In doing so, I aim to defuse certain kinds of skepticism, challenge convention-based accounts of SLEs, and present a series of distinctions for better understanding what the various accounts of SLEs do and do not accomplish.

The standard view of classical cognitive science stated that cognition consists in the manipulation of language-like structures according to formal rules. Since cognition is ‘linguistic’ in itself, according to this view language is just a complex communication system and does not influence cognitive processes in any substantial way. This view has been criticized from several perspectives and a new framework (Embodied Cognition) has emerged that considers cognitive processes as non-symbolic and heavily dependent on the dynamical interactions between the cognitive system (...) and its environment. But notwithstanding the successes of the embodied cognitive science in explaining low-level cognitive behaviors, it is still not clear whether and how it can scale up for explaining high-level cognition. In this paper we argue that this can be done by considering the role of language as a cognitive tool: i.e. how language transforms basic cognitive functions in the high-level functions that are characteristic of human cognition. In order to do that, we review some computational models that substantiate this view with respect to categorization and memory. Since these models are based on a very rudimentary form of non-syntactic ‘language’ we argue that the use of language as a cognitive tool might have been an early discovery in hominid evolution, and might have played a substantial role in the evolution of language itself. (shrink)

How to account for metaphor has long been a contentious issue within pragmatics. Revisiting this debate, Wilson & Carston (2019) analyse Grice’s oft-discussed exclusion of metaphor as an empirically unjustified use of cut-off points on the empirical continuum of language and link it a tension between his underlying focus on formalisation contrary to their aim of maximising pragmatics’ empirical scope. In spite of the latter, Relevance Theory’s various own models fail to account for essential characteristics of metaphor caused by certain (...) non-propositional effects eluding its grasp and subsequently excluded. Rather than solving this with new tools, as Wilson & Carston propose, this paper seeks to examine the aforementioned tension and its link to the use of cut-off points they criticised. I will argue that Relevance Theory, too, uses cut-off points, highlighting their nature as the effect of a shared approach vis-à-vis formalisation rather than an individual flaw of Grice’s: Both exclude certain empirical effects of language in pursuance of a unified theory of communication organised around the notion of intention and grounded in teleological assumptions external to language. Drawing on Derrida’s analogous critique of Austin’s pragmatics, I will illustrate the paradoxical nature of such cut-off points and possible ways forward. (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.

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)

I review and challenge the views on simplicity and its role in linguistics put forward by Ludlow. In particular, I criticize the claim that simplicity—in the sense pertinent to science—is nothing more than ease of use or “user-friendliness”, motivated by economy of labor. I argue that Ludlow’s discussion fails to do justice to the diversity of factors that are relevant to simplicity considerations. This, in turn, leads to the neglect of crucial cases in which the rationale for simplification is unmistakably (...) epistemic, as well as instances where simplicity is part of the content of substantive, empirical hypotheses. I illustrate these points with examples from the history of generative linguistics, such as: the shaping influence exerted by simplicity, via its involvement in the notion of “linguistically significant generalization”, its methodological and substantive contribution to the goal of explanatory adequacy, and its central role in the Minimalist Program’s search “beyond explanatory adequacy”. (shrink)

A generative grammar for a language L generates one or more syntactic structures for each sentence of L and interprets those structures both phonologically and semantically. A widely accepted assumption in generative linguistics dating from the mid-60s, the Generative Grammar Hypothesis , is that the ability of a speaker to understand sentences of her language requires her to have tacit knowledge of a generative grammar of it, and the task of linguistic semantics in those early days was taken to be (...) that of specifying the form that the semantic component of a generative grammar must take. Then in the 70s linguistic semantics took a curious turn. Without rejecting GGH, linguists turned away from the task of characterizing the semantic component of a generative grammar to pursue instead the Montague-inspired project of providing for natural languages the same kind of model-theoretic semantics that logicians devise for the artificial languages of formal systems of logic, and “formal semantics” continues to dominate semantics in linguistics. This essay argues that the sort of compositional meaning theory that would verify GGH would not only be quite different from the theories formal semanticists construct, but would be a more fundamental theory that supersedes those theories in that it would explain why they are true when they are true, but their truth wouldn’t explain its truth. Formal semantics has undoubtedly made important contributions to our understanding of such phenomena as anaphora and quantification, but semantics in linguistics is supposed to be the study of meaning. This means that the formal semanticist can’t be unconcerned that the kind of semantic theory for a natural language that interests her has no place in a theory of linguistic competence; for if GGH is correct, then the more fundamental semantic theory is the compositional meaning theory that is the semantic component of the internally represented generative grammar, and if that is so, then linguistic semantics has so far ignored what really ought to be its primary concern. (shrink)

This paper presents a simple model to estimate the number of languages that existed throughout history, and considers philosophical and linguistic implications of the findings. The estimated number is 150,000 plus or minus 50,000. Because only few of those remain, and there is no reason to believe that that remainder is a statistically representative sample, we should be very cautious about universalistic claims based on existing linguistic variation.

Linguists often advert to what are sometimes called linguistic intuitions. These intuitions and the uses to which they are put give rise to a variety of philosophically interesting questions: What are linguistic intuitions – for example, what kind of attitude or mental state is involved? Why do they have evidential force and how might this force be underwritten by their causal etiology? What light might their causal etiology shed on questions of cognitive architecture – for example, as a case study (...) of how consciously inaccessible subpersonal processes give rise to conscious states, or as a candidate example of cognitive penetrability? What methodological issues arise concerning how linguistic intuitions are gathered and interpreted – for example, might some subjects' intuitions be more reliable than others? And what bearing might all this have on philosophers' own appeals to intuitions? This paper surveys and critically discusses leading answers to these questions. In particular, we defend a ‘mentalist’ conception of linguistics and the role of linguistic intuitions therein. (shrink)

The enigma of the Emergence of Natural Languages, coupled or not with the closely related problem of their Evolution is perceived today as one of the most important scientific problems. The purpose of the present study is actually to outline such a solution to our problem which is epistemologically consonant with the Big Bang solution of the problem of the Emergence of the Universe}. Such an outline, however, becomes articulable, understandable, and workable only in a drastically extended epistemic and scientific (...) oecumene, where known and habitual approaches to the problem, both theoretical and experimental, become distant, isolated, even if to some degree still hospitable conceptual and methodological islands. The guiding light of our inquiry will be Eugene Paul Wigner's metaphor of ``the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences'', i.e., the steadily evolving before our eyes, since at least XVIIth century, ``the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics''. Kurt Goedel's incompleteness and undecidability theory will be our guardian discerner against logical fallacies of otherwise apparently plausible explanations. John Bell's ``unspeakableness'' and the commonplace counterintuitive character of quantum phenomena will be our encouragers. And the radical novelty of the introduced here and adapted to our purposes Big Bang epistemological paradigm will be an appropriate, even if probably shocking response to our equally shocking discovery in the oldest among well preserved linguistic fossils of perfect mathematical structures outdoing the best artifactual Assemblers. (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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

In this paper, I aim to discuss what puns, metaphysically, are. I argue that the type-token view of words leads to an indeterminacy problem when we consider puns. I then outline an alternative account of puns, based on recent nominalist views of words, that does not suffer from this indeterminacy.