A number of recent studies have revealed correspondences between song- and language-related neural structures, pathways, and gene expression in humans and songbirds. Analyses of vocal learning, song structure, and the distribution of song elements have similarly revealed a remarkable number of shared characteristics with human speech. This article reviews recent developments in the understanding of these issues with reference to the phonological phenomena observed in human language. This investigation suggests that birds possess a host of abilities necessary for human phonological (...) computation, as evidenced by behavioral, neuroanatomical, and molecular genetic studies. Vocal-learning birds therefore present an excellent model for studying some areas of human phonology, though differences in the primitives of song and language as well as the absence of a human-like morphosyntax make human phonology differ from birdsong phonology in crucial ways. (shrink)

Much of the current thought concerning mathematical ontology and epistemology follows Quine and Putnam in looking to the indispensable application of mathematics in science. A standard assumption of the indispensability approach is some version of confirmational holism, i.e., that only "sufficiently large" sets of beliefs "face the tribunal of experience." In this paper I develop and defend a distinction between a pure mathematical theory and a mathematized scientific theory in which it is applied. This distinction allows for the possibility that (...) pure mathematical theories are systematically insulated from such confirmation in virtue of their being distinct from the "sufficiently large" blocks of scientific theory that are empirically confirmed. (shrink)

We evaluate the “story grammar” approach to story understanding from three perspectives. We first examine the formal properties of the grammars and find only one to be formally adequate. We next evaluate the grammars empirically by asking whether they generate all simple stories and whether they generate only stories. We find many stories that they do not generate and one major class of nonstory that they do generate. We also evaluate the grammars' potential as comprehension models and find that they (...) would add nothing to semantic models that focus on the story content. Hence we advocate a story content oriented approach to studying story understanding instead of the structural story grammar approach. (shrink)