catterpillars become butterflies infants become speakers of human languages whose meaningful expressions can be used in thought and communication Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle ID: 306675
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Slide1
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 communicationSlide2
Metamorphosis affects LifestyleSlide3
Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle
infants become speakers
of human languages, whose meaningful expressions
can be used in thought and communicationSlide4
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 communicationSlide5
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
possible
languages
Human
Languages
Finite
Languages
Gruesome
Languages
More Permissive
LanguagesSlide6
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
Slide7
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.
Slide8
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.
possible
languages
Human
Languages
Finite
Languages
Gruesome
Languages
More Permissive
Languages
Infinite Sets of SymbolsSlide9
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 proceduresSlide10
Some “Recent” Work: Elaborating and Defending…a Chomsky-style conception of Human Languagesa plausible companion conception of meaningPoverty 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, like
Framing Event
Variables
,
that highlight
skepticism about
semantic
externalism
and the need for
substantive
(non-disquotational) theories of meaning
papers
and a
book in the works
that provide the
positive proposal:
meanings are
instructions
for
how to build
(systematically
composable
)
concepts
of 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
)