The essential role of language in rational cognition is analysed. The approach is functional: only the results of the connection between language, reality, and thinking are considered. Scientific language is analysed as an extension and improvement of everyday language. The analysis gives a uniform view of language and rational cognition. The consequences for the nature of ontology, truth, logic, thinking, scientific theories, and mathematics are derived.

In this paper, I show how a novel treatment of speech acts can be combined with a well-known liberal argument for multiculturalism in a way that will justify claims about the preservation, protection, or accommodation of minority languages. The key to the paper is the claim that every language makes a distinctive range of speech acts possible, acts that cannot be realized by means of any other language. As a result, when a language disappears, so does a class of speech (...) acts. If we accept that our social identities are in large part constituted by the decisions we make about how to speak, language loss, then, will amount to a substantial infringement on our autonomy in a particularly important domain. (shrink)

The concept of biological mimicry is viewed as a ‘process of life’ theory rather than a ‘process of change’ theory—regardless of the historical interest and heuristic value of the subject for the study of evolution. Mimicry is a dynamic ecological system reflecting the possibilities for mutualism and parasitism created by a pre-established bipartite signal-based relationship between two organisms – a potential model and its signal receiver (potential operator). In a mimicry system agency and perception play essential, interconnected roles. Mimicry thus (...) describes emergent biologically meaningful relationships based on synergy, and is not an object-based theory. Biosemiotics offers a particularly valuable discipline for analysing the dynamics and nuances of mimicry systems, and can thus pave the way for a better and more complete understanding of how mimicry has evolved in the past, and how it might evolve in the future—presented here with special reference to the need for an integrated, ‘third way of evolution’ approach to biological relativity. A revised definition of mimicry is proposed. (shrink)

This paper sets out to demonstrate that a phenomenological reflection on language highlights the possibilities of authenticity in communication, and as such provides a very necessary complement to the dominant linguistic perspectives: the syntactic and grammatical perspective, Saussurean linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics. While the syntactic and grammatical perspective, which predominates in the educational context, presents language as an institutionalized, authoritarian and self-contained system, Saussurean linguistics provides a view of language as a complex, self-contained, technical system, as such reflecting the (...) nature of modern society. The third perspective, systemic functional linguistics, describes templates of specific genre, models which aid students to construct their own, while simultaneously discouraging individual selfexpression. In contrast, a reflective phenomenological perspective identifies and encourages authentic self-expression. The paper concludes by considering ways to reconcile the impetus in language teaching towards, on the one hand, the language of institutional authority, and, on the other, individual self-expression. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

Le terme « prédicat » est communément utilisé en grammaire cognitive, mais la prédication occupe une place marginale dans la théorie, qui préfère raisonner en termes de construction. La langue dispose en effet d’un répertoire d’agencements formels qui sont autant de structures, procédant par assemblage de symboles et appariements conventionnels forme-sens. Organisatrices et médiatrices de l’expérience qu’elles sont chargées de mettre en syntaxe, les constructions verbales scénarisent les événements, en distinguant cadres, repères, actants, et en mettant en perspective leur interaction. (...) L’analyse d’une construction verbale renseigne donc autant sur l’événement lui-même que sur la façon dont ce dernier est appréhendé par un sujet parlant, percevant et pensant. En grammaire cognitive, toute forme ou catégorie, lexicale ou grammaticale, contribue à l’élaboration du sens. Aucune n’est arbitraire ni vide. Même la plus schématique s’avère signifiante. Bien que les noms de Kay, Fillmore, Lakoff, Goldberg et Croft soient ceux volontiers associés à l’émergence et à la diffusion de la grammaire des constructions, il faut reconnaître l’influence capitale de Whorf, qui très tôt conçoit la syntaxe comme un patron structural et cognitif, une forme symbolique à part entière. Mais surtout, il est important de comprendre que la grammaire cognitive des constructions repose tout entière sur les principes fondamentaux de la grammaire cognitive générale que Langacker énonce dès les fondements. (shrink)