Some animals are born early, and acquire a “second nature”
catterpillars become
butterflies
infants become speakers
of human languages, whose meaningful expressions
can be used in thought and communication
Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle
Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle
infants become speakers of human languages,
whose meaningful expressions can be used in
thought and communication
What are human languages?What are the words and phrases of a human language?
What are meanings of these linguistic expressions?How are they are related to our distinctively human concepts?
How are they are related to the things we think and talk about?
infants become speakers of human languages,
whose meaningful expressions can be used in
thought and communication
Assumption: human children acquire languages of a special sort.
(a) unbounded: each Human Language pairs endlessly many meanings of some kind with pronunciations of some
kind
(b) yet limited: Human Languages pair meanings with pronunciations in ways that respect substantive constraints
possiblelanguages Human
Languages
FiniteLanguages
Gruesome Languages
More Permissive Languages
unbounded yet limited…
• Bingley is ready to please
(a) Bingley is ready to please relevant parties
(b) Bingley is ready to be pleased by relevant parties
• Bingley is eager to please
(a) Bingley is eager to please relevant parties
#(b) Bingley is eager to be pleased by relevant parties
• Bingley is easy to please
#(a) Bingley can easily please relevant parties
(b) Bingley can easily be pleased by relevant parties
unbounded yet limited…
• hiker lost kept walking circles
(a) The hiker who was lost kept walking in circles?
(b) The hiker who lost was kept walking in circles?
• Was the hiker who lost kept walking in circles?
#(a) The hiker who was lost kept walking in circles?
(b) The hiker who lost was kept walking in circles?
• The senator called the donor from Texas.
(a) The senator called the donor, and the donor was from Texas.
(b) The senator called the donor, and the call was from Texas.
#(c) The senator called the donor, and the senator was from Texas.
Assumption: human children acquire languages of a special sort.
unbounded yet limited procedures: children come to implement algorithms that
pair meanings with pronunciations in certain ways
(1) Human linguistic meanings are (such that they can be) paired with pronunciations in these biologically implementable
ways.
(2) The details, including constraints on lexical and phrasal meanings, make some conceptions of meaning less plausible than others.
possiblelanguages Human
Languages
FiniteLanguages
Gruesome Languages
More Permissive Languages
Infinite Sets of Symbols
We can use ‘language’ and ‘meaning’ to talk about many things…
LANGUAGES MEANINGS
concepts
contents
senses
referents/extensions
patterns of use
intentions
sets of possible worlds
functions from contexts to extensions
instructions for how to build concepts
But for any Xs, it is an empirical question whether Human Languages pair Xs with pronunciations.
complexes of “dispositions to verbal behavior”
strings of a “corpus”
things ascribed by “radical interpreters”
sets of “ordered pairs of strings and meanings”
generative procedures
Some “Recent” Work: Elaborating and Defending…
a Chomsky-style conception of Human Languages
a plausible companion conception of meaning
Poverty of Stimulus papers (often
replying to critics):with Crain
about kids and constrained homophony;
with Berwick/Chomsky,
updating someclassic arguments
proposals about “eventish”
constructions:Small Verbs, Complex Events
;Davidson reviews;
On Explaining That;and a 2005 book,
Events and Semantic
Architecture
papers, likeFraming Event
Variables, that highlight
skepticism aboutsemantic externalism
and the need for substantive
(non-disquotational) theories of meaning
papers and abook in the works that provide thepositive proposal:
meanings are instructions for
how to build(systematically composable)
conceptsof a special sort
collborative work on ‘most’ as a window into Language/Cognition interfaces
composition is simple: phrasal meanings are conjunctive and monadic
acquiring words is a big deal: lexicalizing concepts involves"reformatting” (cp. Frege)
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