Language research is currently in a state of flux. The phenomenon of language is not merely the topic of investigation in linguistics, it is examined by a multitude of scholars with different scientific backgrounds. In order to examine how these various disciplines approach language, a think-tank was founded in 2002, called DITO, Dynamisch Inter(-en trans)disciplinair onderzoek, or Dynamic Inter- (and trans)disciplinary Research. The think-tank is located at the Belgian Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels). This book provides short introductory (...) articles to the language research conducted by some of the think-tank’s most important members, from within the point of view of the following 5 disciplines: philosophy of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, sign language research and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Since 1970-ties in the theory of syntax of natural language quite a number of competing, incommensurable theoretic frameworks have emerged. Today the lack of a leading paradigm and kaleidoscope of perspectives deprives our general understanding of syntax and its relation to semantics and pragmatics. The present book is an attempt to reestablish the most fundamental ideas and intuitions of syntactic well-formedness within a new general account. The account is not supposed to compete with any of today’s syntactic frameworks, but to (...) provide a deeper understanding of why these frameworks succeed or fail when they do and to show a new way for cooperation between logicians and linguists which may lead in future to a unified, yet more specific account. (shrink)

Internalism is an explanatory strategy that makes the internal structure and constitution of the organism a basis for the investigation of its external function and the ways in which it is embedded in an environment. It is opposed to an externalist explanatory strategy, which takes its departure from observations about external function and mind-environment interactions, and infers and rationalizes internal organismic structure from that. This paper addresses the origins of truth, a basic ingredient in the human conceptual scheme. I suggest (...) the necessity of pursuing an internalist line of explanation for it, as adopted in the biolinguistic program and generative grammar at large. According to this view, the concept of truth is a presupposition for the way language is used in relation to the world, rather than a function of that use or a consequence of language-world relations. (shrink)

One important difference between existing accounts of protolanguage lies in their assumptions on the semantic complexity of protolinguistic utterances. I bring evidence about the nature of linguistic communication to bear on the plausibility of these assumptions, and show that communication is fundamentally inferential and characterised by semantic uncertainty. This not only allows individuals to maintain variation in linguistic representation, but also imposes a selection pressure that meanings be reconstructible from context. I argue that protolanguage utterances had varying degrees of semantic (...) complexity, and developed into complex language gradually, through the same processes of re-analysis and analogy which still underpin continual change in modern languages. (shrink)

Grodzinsky interprets linguistic differences between agrammatic comprehension and production symptoms as supporting the hypothesis that the mechanisms underlying grammatical encoding (sentence formulation) and grammatical decoding (syntactic parsing) are at least partially distinct. This inference is shown to be premature. A range of experimentally established similarities between the encoding and decoding processes is highlighted, testifying to the viability of the hypothesis that receptive and productive syntactic tasks are performed by the same syntactic processor.

Spencer’s heritage, while almost a forgotten chapter in the history of biology, lives on in psychology and the philosophy of mind. I particularly discuss externalist views of meaning, on which meaning crucially depends on a notion of reference, and ask whether reference should be thought of as cause or effect. Is the meaning of a word explained by what it refers to, or should we say that what we use a word to refer to is explained by what concept it (...) expresses? I argue for the latter view, which I call ‘Darwinian’, and against the former, ‘Spencerian’ one, assuming conceptual structures in humans to be an instance of adaptive structures, and adaptive relations to an environment to be the effect rather than the cause of evolutionary novelties. I conclude with the deficiency – both empirically and methodologically – of a functionalist study of human concepts and the languages they are embedded in, as it would be undertaken in a paradigm that identifies meaning with reference or that gives reference an explanatory role to play for what concepts we have. (shrink)

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For many years the evolution of language has been seen as a disreputable topic, mired in fanciful “just so stories” about language origins. However, in the last decade a new synthesis of modern linguistics, cognitive neuroscience and neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has begun to make important contributions to our understanding of the biology and evolution of language. I review some of this recent progress, focusing on the value of the comparative method, which uses data from animal species to draw inferences about (...) language evolution. Discussing speech first, I show how data concerning a wide variety of species, from monkeys to birds, can increase our understanding of the anatomical and neural mechanisms underlying human spoken language, and how bird and whale song provide insights into the ultimate evolutionary function of language. I discuss the “descended larynx” of humans, a peculiar adaptation for speech that has received much attention in the past, which despite earlier claims is not uniquely human. Then I will turn to the neural mechanisms underlying spoken language, pointing out the difficulties animals apparently experience in perceiving hierarchical structure in sounds, and stressing the importance of vocal imitation in the evolution of a spoken language. Turning to ultimate function, I suggest that communication among kin (especially between parents and offspring) played a crucial but neglected role in driving language evolution. Finally, I briefly discuss phylogeny, discussing hypotheses that offer plausible routes to human language from a non-linguistic chimp-like ancestor. I conclude that comparative data from living animals will be key to developing a richer, more interdisciplinary understanding of our most distinctively human trait: language. (shrink)

This paper explores a structure ubiquitous in grammar, the embedded tree, and develops a proposal for how such embedded structures played a fundamental role in the evolution of consonants and vowels. Assuming that linguistic capabilities emerged as a cognitive system from a simply reactive system and that such a transition required the construction of an internal mapping of the system body, we propose that this mapping was determined through articulation and acoustics. By creating distinctions between articulators in the vocal tract (...) or by acoustic features of sounds, and then embedding these distinctions, the various possible properties of consonants and vowels emerged. These embedded distinctions represent paradigmatic options for the production of sounds, which provide the basic building blocks for prosodic structure. By anchoring these embedded structures in the anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract, the evolution of phonology itself can be explained by extra-linguistic factors. (shrink)

from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that infor- mation has a phenomenal aspect. How then do you get from phenomenal infor- mation to human consciousness? This paper proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, first by trapping and integrating it through closure, and second by maintaining dynamics at the edge of chaos through simul- taneous processes of divergence and convergence. The origin (...) of life through autocatalytic closure, and the origin of an interconnected worldview through conceptual closure, induced phase transitions in the degree to which informa- tion, and thus consciousness, is locally amplified. Divergence and convergence of cognitive information may involve phenomena observed in light e.g. focusing, interference, and resonance. By making information flow inward- biased, clo- sure shields us from external consciousness; thus the paucity of consciousness may be an illusion. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

In a provocative book, Andrew Carstairs- McCarthy argues that the apparently universal distinction in human languages between sentences and noun phrases cannot be assumed to be inevitable for languages with the expressive power of human languages, but needs explaining. His work suggests, but does not explicitly state, that there is also no conceptual necessity for the distinction between basic types e and t, a distinction argued for by Frege and carried into formal semantics through the work of Montague. Pragmatic distinctions (...) among various kinds of speech acts, including asserting, questioning, commanding, and pointing things out are assumed in Carstairs- McCarthy ’s work, as are expressions of functional types; what is questioned is whether a syntacticized sentence-NP distinction is essential. (shrink)