On the Notion "Type of Language" Petr Sgall It is well known that the high frequency of terminological vagueness and confusion has been a serious obstacle ...
Roger Schank's research in AI takes seriously the ideas that understanding natural language involves mapping its expressions into an internal representation scheme and that these internal representations have a syntax appropriate for computational operations. It therefore falls within the computational approach to the study of mind. This paper discusses certain aspects of Schank's approach in order to assess its potential adequacy as a (partial) model of cognition. This version of the Language of Thought hypothesis encounters some of (...) the same difficulties that arise for Fodor's account. (shrink)
A new view of the functional role of the left anterior cortex in language use is proposed. The experimental record indicates that most human linguistic abilities are not localized in this region. In particular, most of syntax (long thought to be there) is not located in Broca's area and its vicinity (operculum, insula, and subjacent white matter). This cerebral region, implicated in Broca's aphasia, does have a role in syntactic processing, but a highly specific one: It is the (...) neural home to receptive mechanisms involved in the computation of the relation between transformationally moved phrasal constituents and their extraction sites (in line with the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis). It is also involved in the construction of higher parts of the syntactic tree in speech production. By contrast, basic combinatorial capacities necessary for language processing – for example, structure-building operations, lexical insertion – are not supported by the neural tissue of this cerebral region, nor is lexical or combinatorial semantics. The dense body of empirical evidence supporting this restrictive view comes mainly from several angles on lesion studies of syntax in agrammatic Broca's aphasia. Five empirical arguments are presented: experiments in sentence comprehension, cross-linguistic considerations (where aphasia findings from several language types are pooled and scrutinized comparatively), grammaticality and plausibility judgments, real-time processing of complex sentences, and rehabilitation. Also discussed are recent results from functional neuroimaging and from structured observations on speech production of Broca's aphasics. Syntactic abilities are nonetheless distinct from other cognitive skills and are represented entirely and exclusively in the left cerebral hemisphere. Although more widespread in the left hemisphere than previously thought, they are clearly distinct from other human combinatorial and intellectual abilities. The neurological record (based on functional imaging, split-brain and right-hemisphere-damaged patients, as well as patients suffering from a breakdown of mathematical skills) indicates that language is a distinct, modularly organized neurological entity. Combinatorial aspects of the language faculty reside in the human left cerebral hemisphere, but only the transformational component (or algorithms that implement it in use) is located in and around Broca's area. Key Words: agrammatism; aphasia; Broca's area; cerebral localization; dyscalculia; functional neuroanatomy; grammatical transformation; modularity; neuroimaging; syntax; trace deletion. (shrink)
Michael Friedman has recently argued that Carnap'sLogical Syntax of Language is fundamentally flawed in a way that reveals the ultimate failure of logical positivism. Friedman's argument depends crucially on two claims: (1) that Carnap was committed to the view that there is a universal metalanguage and (2) that given what Carnap wanted from a metalanguage, in particular given that he wanted a definition of analytic for an object language, he was in fact committed to a hierarchy of (...) stronger and stronger metalanguages. We argue that neither of these claims need be accepted. We show that there is no textual evidence for (1) and that if metalanguages are to be used for merely descriptive and not also justificatory purposes, Carnap does not need to define analyticity sufficiently for proving consistency, and so could have given a definition that does not entail a hierarchy of metalanguages. (shrink)
Pierre Wagner (ed.): Carnap’s logical syntax of language . Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009, 288pp, £57.00 HB Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9522-8 Authors Alan Richardson, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall—E370, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Canada Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
Language development is one of the major battle grounds within the humanities and sciences. This is the first time that the three major theories in language development research have been fully described and compared within the covers of a single book. The three approaches: (1) The rationalism of Chomsky and the syntactic nativism that it entails; (2) The empiricism instinct in connectionist modelling of syntactic development; (3) The pragmatism of those who see the child as actively 'constructing' a (...) grammatical 'inventory' piece-by-piece through recruiting general learning abilities and socio-cognitive knowledge. -/- The book is unique in striking a balance between broad philosophical assessment of these three theories and fine-grain, fairly technical, accounts of how they fare at the empirical and linguistic 'coal faces'. -/- In Part 1, the kind of psychology to which rationalism, empiricism, and pragmatism give rise are described with reference to philosophers such as Fodor, Hume, and the American pragmatists from Peirce, to Rorty and Brandom. After an introduction to the syntactic analysis of the sentence, Part 2 continues with an account of the evolution of Chomskyan theory from its inception to the present day, followed by a review of developmental research inspired by it. Part 3 takes a sceptical look at connectionist modelling of syntactic development. Part 4 describes the kind of linguistic theories that the socio-cognitive approach finds sympathetic, reviewing its empirical progress (e.g. the work of Tomasello), ending with a comparison of how the generativists and functionalists tackle the evolution of syntax. -/- Clearly and accessibly written, the book will be an important text for developmental psychologists, linguists, and philosophers working on language. (shrink)
Fodor and Pylyshyn's critique of connectionism has posed a challenge to connectionists: Adequately explain such nomological regularities as systematicity and productivity without postulating a "language of thought" (LOT). Some connectionists like Smolensky took the challenge very seriously, and attempted to meet it by developing models that were supposed to be non-classical. At the core of these attempts lies the claim that connectionist models can provide a representational system with a combinatorial syntax and processes sensitive to syntactic structure. They (...) are not implementation models because, it is claimed, the way they obtain syntax and structure sensitivity is not "concatenative," hence "radically different" from the way classicists handle them. In this paper, I offer an analysis of what it is to physically satisfy/realize a formal system. In this context, I examine the minimal truth-conditions of LOT Hypothesis. From my analysis it will follow that concatenative realization of formal systems is irrelevant to LOTH since the very notion of LOT is indifferent to such an implementation level issue as concatenation. I will conclude that to the extent to which they can explain the law-like cognitive regularities, a certain class of connectionist models proposed as radical alternatives to the classical LOT paradigm will in fact turn out to be LOT models, even though new and potentially very exciting ones. (shrink)
Proponents of the language of thought (LOT) thesis are realists when it comes to syntactically structured representations, and must defend their view against instrumentalists, who would claim that syntactic structures may be useful in describing cognition, but have no more causal powers in governing cognition than do the equations of physics in guiding the planets. This paper explores what it will take to provide an argument for LOT that can defend its conclusion from instrumentalism. I illustrate a difficulty in (...) this project by discussing arguments for LOT put forward by Horgan and Tienson. When their evidence is viewed in the light of results in connectionist research, it is hard to see how a realist conception of syntax can be formulated and defended. (shrink)
A lengthy debate in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences has turned on whether the phenomenon known as ‘systematicity’ of language and thought shows that connectionist explanatory aspirations are misguided. We investigate the issue of just which phenomenon ‘systematicity’ is supposed to be. The much-rehearsed examples always suggest that being systematic has something to do with ways in which some parts of expressions in natural languages (and, more conjecturally, some parts of thoughts) can be substituted for others without altering (...) well-formedness. We show that under one construal this yields a grossly weak claim that is not just compatible with a narrow version of associationist psychology but essentially coincides with a formalization of its descriptive power. Under another construal we get a claim (apparently unintended) that requires natural languages to fall within the context-free class, a claim that most linguists regard as too strong. Looking more closely at this proposed reconstruction of systematicity leads us to endorse, with further illustrations, the suggestion of Johnson (2004) that systematicity as a matter of substitutability of co-categorial constituents for one another does not appearto hold of natural languages at all. The appeal of the ill-delineated notion of systematicity may lie in the fact that within certain subclasses of lexical items mutual intersubstitutability does seem to hold, and theexplanation for that lies in a limitation on human memory: we simply cannot learn separate privileges of syntactic distribution for all of the huge number of words and phrases that we know. (shrink)
The most conceptually drastic change in natural language syntactic theory in recent years is the introduction of economy conditions (ECs). Although there is not a unified formal notion of economy, the intuition is that natural languages are governed by a general “less is more” principle. Those who take this seriously, and regard it not just as principle guiding the researcher but as something to be implemented directly in grammars, are often led to comparative economy conditions (comparative ECs), which select (...) from a set of structures the most economical among them according to some criterion. Such conditions are associated with the Minimalist Program (MP), but they are found also in Optimality Theory (OT) and Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG).1 The following is a sample of the prominent works mentioning ‘economy’. (shrink)
Available for the first time in 20 years, here is the Rudolf Carnap's famous principle of tolerance by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of ...
This volumes aim is to provide an introduction to Carnaps book from a historical and philosophical perspective, each chapter focusing on one specific issue. The book will be of interest not only to Carnap scholars but to all those interested in the history of analytical philosophy.
Human cognition is rich, varied, and complex. In this Chapter we argue that because of the richness of human cognition (and human mental life generally), there must be a syntax of cognitive states, but because of this very richness, cognitive processes cannot be describable by exceptionless rules. The argument for syntax, in Section 1, has to do with being able to get around in any number of possible environments in a complex world. Since nature did not know where (...) in the world humans would find themselves—nor within pretty broad limits what the world would be like —nature had to provide them with a means of “representing” a great deal of information about any of indefinitely many locations. We see no way that this could be done except by way of syntax— that is, by a systematic way of producing new, appropriate representations as needed. We discuss what being systematic must amount to, and what, in consequence, syntax should mean. We hold that syntax does not require a part/whole relationship. The argument for the claim that human cognitive processes cannot be described by exceptionless rules, in Section 2, appeals to the fact that there is no limit to the factors one might.. (shrink)
A traditional view maintains that thought, while expressed in language, is non-linguistic in nature and occurs in non-linguistic beings as well. I assess this view against current theories of the evolutionary design of human grammar. I argue that even if some forms of human thought are shared with non-human animals, a residue remains that characterizes a unique way in which human thought is organized as a system. I explore the hypothesis that the cause of this difference is a grammatical (...) way of structuring semantic information, and I present evidence that the organization of grammar precisely reflects the organization of a specific mode of thought apparently distinctive of humans. Since there appears to be no known non-grammatical structuring principle for the relevant mode of thought, I suggest that grammar is that principle, with no independent ?Language of Thought? needed. (shrink)
This paper discusses the distinctions indicated in its title. It is argued that the distinction between syntax and semantics is much more important for the present situation in logic than other distinctions. In particular, doing formal syntax and formal semantics requires the use of an informal melanguage based on ordinary mathematics.
Michael Devitt has argued that Chomsky, along with many other Linguists and philosophers, is ignorant of the true nature of Generative Linguistics. In particular, Devitt argues that Chomsky and others wrongly believe the proper object of linguistic inquiry to be speakers' competences, rather than the languages that speakers are competent with. In return, some commentators on Devitt's work have returned the accusation, arguing that it is Devitt who is ignorant about Linguistics. In this note, I consider whether there might be (...) less to this apparent dispute than meets the eye. -/- . (shrink)
Abstract It is widely assumed that the meaning of at least some types of expressions involves more than their reference to objects, and hence that there may be co-referential expressions which differ in meaning. It is also widely assumed that ?syntax does not suffice for semantics?, i.e. that we cannot account for the fact that expressions have semantic properties in purely syntactical or computational terms. The main goal of the paper is to argue against a third related assumption, namely (...) that what is responsible for a difference in meaning between co-referential expressions is the computational difference in the cognitive functioning of the expressions. ?Intentional aspects? of expressions?those features which their meanings involve in addition to reference?cannot be syntacticized, since they are individuated not in terms of any cognitive feature, but rather in terms of those properties of the referents through which the expressions refer to them, and cognitive features cannot determine such properties in exactly the same sense as they cannot determine reference. (shrink)
It has been argued that Psychological Externalism is irrelevant to psychology. The grounds for this are that PE fails to individuate intentional states in accord with causal power, and that psychology is primarily interested in the causal roles of psychological states. It is also claimed that one can individuate psychological states via their syntactic structure in some internal "language of thought". This syntactic structure is an internal feature of psychological states and thus provides a key to their causal powers. (...) I argue that in fact any syntactic structure deserving the name will require an external individuation no less than the semantic features of psychological states. (shrink)
tongues with the utmost fluency. Any and every Japanese child — all speak Japanese without difficulty. Does that not show a startling talent? How, by what means, does..
An important distinction between phonology and syntax has been overlooked. All phonological patterns belong to the regular region of the Chomsky Hierarchy, but not all syntactic patterns do. We argue that the hypothesis that humans employ distinct learning mechanisms for phonology and syntax currently offers the best explanation for this difference.
Introduction 1.1 GOALS This book is devoted to an in-depth investigation of some of the properties of Logical Form (LF). In particular, the primary aim of ...
Terry Horgan and John Tienson have suggested that connectionism might provide a framework within which to articulate a theory of cognition according to which there are mental representations without rules (RWR) (Horgan and Tienson 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992). In essence, RWR states that cognition involves representations in a language of thought, but that these representations are not manipulated by the sort of rules that have traditionally been posited. In the development of RWR, Horgan and Tienson attempt to forestall a (...) particular line of criticism, theSyntactic Argument, which would show RWR to be inconsistent with connectionism. In essence, the argument claims that the node-level rules of connectionist networks, along with the semantic interpretations assigned to patterns of activation, serve to determine a set of representation-level rules incompatible with the RWR conception of cognition. The present paper argues that the Syntactic Argument can be made to show that RWR is inconsistent with connectionism. (shrink)
More and more researchers are examining grammar acquisition from theoretical perspectives that treat it as an emergent phenomenon. In this essay, I argue that a robustly developmental perspective provides a potential explanation for some of the well-known crosslinguistic features of early child language: the process of acquisition is shaped in part by the developmental constraints embodied in von Baer’s law of development. An established model of development, the Developmental Lock, captures and elucidates the probabilistic generalizations at the heart of (...) von Baer’s law. When this model is applied to the acquisition of grammar, it predicts that grammatical achievements that are more generatively entrenched will emerge earlier in development and will be more developmentally resilient than those that are less generatively entrenched. I show that the first prediction is supported by a wealth of psycholinguistic evidence involving typically developing children and that the second prediction is supported by numerous studies involving both children who receive deficient linguistic input and children who experience various language impairments. The success of this model demonstrates the analytic potential of a developmental approach to the study of language acquisition. (shrink)
This volume contains twelve chapters on the derivation of and the correlates to verb initial word order. The studies in this volume cover such widely divergent languages as Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Old Irish, Biblical Hebrew, Jakaltek, Mam, Lummi (Straits Salish), Niuean, Malagasy, Palauan, K'echi', and Zapotec, from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, including Minimalism, information structure, and sentence processing. The first book to take a crosslinguistic comparative approach to verb initial syntax, this volume provides new data to (...) some old problems anddebates and explores some innovative approaches to the derivation of verb initial order. (shrink)
0 Introduction 0.1 Variation in nominal coreference Nominal coreference has received much interest in the field of text linguistics as an essential strategy ...
What is the mind? How does it work? How does it influence behavior? Some psychologists hope to answer such questions in terms of concepts drawn from computer science and artificial intelligence. They test their theories by modeling mental processes in computers. This book shows how computer models are used to study many psychological phenomena--including vision, language, reasoning, and learning. It also shows that computer modeling involves differing theoretical approaches. Computational psychologists disagree about some basic questions. For instance, should the (...) mind be modeled by digital computers, or by parallel-processing systems more like brains? Do computer programs consist of meaningless patterns, or do they embody (and explain) genuine meaning? (shrink)
In this paper we argue that the insistence by Fodor et. al. that the Language of Thought hypothesis must be true rests on mistakes about the kinds of explanations that must be provided of cognitive phenomena. After examining the canonical arguments for the LOT, we identify a weak version of the LOT hypothesis which we think accounts for some of the intuitions that there must be a LOT. We then consider what kinds of explanation cognitive phenomena require, and conclude (...) that three main confusions lead to the invalid inference of the truth of a stronger LOT hypothesis from the weak and trivial version. These confusions concern the relationship between syntax and semantics, the nature of higher-level causation in cognitive science, and differing roles of explanations invoking intrinsic structures of minds on the one hand, and aetiological or evolutionary accounts of their properties on the other. (shrink)
During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels--phonological, syntactic, and semantic--and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar. The Semantics of (...)Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories. (shrink)
We are used to the idea that computers operate on numbers, yet another kind of data is equally important: the syntax of formal languages, with variables, binding, and alpha-equivalence. The original application of nominal techniques, and the one with greatest prominence in this paper, is to reasoning on formal syntax with variables and binding. Variables can be modelled in many ways: for instance as numbers (since we usually take countably many of them); as links (since they may `point' (...) to a binding site in the term, where they are bound); or as functions (since they often, though not always, represent `an unknown'). None of these models is perfect. In every case for the models above, problems arise when trying to use them as a basis for a fully formal mechanical treatment of formal language. The problems are practical—but their underlying cause may be mathematical. The issue is not whether formal syntax exists, since clearly it does, so much as what kind of mathematical structure it is. To illustrate this point by a parody, logical derivations can be modelled using a Gödel encoding (i.e., injected into the natural numbers). It would be false to conclude from this that proof-theory is a branch of number theory and can be understood in terms of, say, Peano's axioms. Similarly, as it turns out, it is false to conclude from the fact that variables can be encoded e.g., as numbers, that the theory of syntax-with-binding can be understood in terms of the theory of syntax-without-binding, plus the theory of numbers (or, taking this to a logical extreme, purely in terms of the theory of numbers). It cannot; something else is going on. What that something else is, has not yet been fully understood. In nominal techniques, variables are an instance of names, and names are data. We model names using urelemente with properties that, pleasingly enough, turn out to have been investigated by Fraenkel and Mostowski in the first half of the 20th century for a completely different purpose than modelling formal language. What makes this model really interesting is that it gives names distinctive properties which can be related to useful logic and programming principles for formal syntax. Since the initial publications, advances in the mathematics and presentation have been introduced piecemeal in the literature. This paper provides in a single accessible document an updated development of the foundations of nominal techniques. This gives the reader easy access to updated results and new proofs which they would otherwise have to search across two or more papers to find, and full proofs that in other publications may have been elided. We also include some new material not appearing elsewhere. (shrink)
Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work for this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists (...) and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)
The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. -/- Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work (...) for this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute more than forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)
Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work for this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists (...) and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)
The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. -/- Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work (...) for this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute more than forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)
This book is concerned with the relationship between semantics and surface structure and in particular with the way in which each is mapped into the other. Jim Miller argues that semantic and syntactic structure require different representations and that semantic structure is far more complex than many analysts realise. He argues further that semantic structure should be based on notions of location and movement. The need for a semantic component of greater complexity is demonstrated by an examination of prepositions, particles, (...) adverbs and verb-prefixes, and is shown to accord with cross-language and historical facts. The volume goes on to consider the sort of rules that are required to map semantic structures onto syntax. Semantics and Syntax tackles fundamental issues and draws together many of the key concepts of traditional grammar and formal linguistics. The general framework for handling syntax, semantics and morphology that it outlines is perhaps a controversial one, but it will be recognized as challenging and original. (shrink)
Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work for this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists (...) and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)
Searle's Chinese Room was supposed to prove that computers can't understand: the man in the room, following, like a computer, syntactical rules alone, though indistinguishable from a genuine Chinese speaker, doesn't understand a word. But such a room is impossible: the man won't be able to respond correctly to questions like What is the time?, even though such an ability is indispensable for a genuine Chinese speaker. Several ways to provide the room with the required ability are considered, and it (...) is concluded that for each of these the room will have understanding. Hence, Searle's argument is invalid. (shrink)
This paper provides a theory of the nature of symbols in the language of thought (LOT). My discussion consists in three parts. In part one, I provide three arguments for the individuation of primitive symbols in terms of total computational role. The first of these arguments claims that Classicism requires that primitive symbols be typed in this manner; no other theory of typing will suffice. The second argument contends that without this manner of symbol individuation, there will be computational (...) processes that fail to supervene on syntax, together with the rules of composition and the computational algorithms. The third argument says that cognitive science needs a natural kind that is typed by total computational role. Otherwise, either cognitive science will be incomplete, or its laws will have counterexamples. Then, part two defends this view from a criticism, offered by both Jerry Fodor and Jesse Prinz, who respond to my view with the charge that because the types themselves are individuated. (shrink)
This paper discusses several case studies that illustrate the relationship between the philosophy of language and three branches of linguistics: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Among other things, I identify binding arguments in the linguistics literature preceding (Stanley 2000), and I invent binding arguments to evaluate various semantic and pragmatic theories of belief ascriptions.
I explore one apparent source of conflict between our naïve view of grammatical properties and the best available scientific view of grammatical properties. That source is the modal dependence of the range of naïve, or manifest, grammatical properties that is available to a speaker upon the configurations and operations of their internal systems—that is, upon scientific grammatical properties. Modal dependence underwrites the possibility of conflicting grammatical appearances. In response to that possibility, I outline a compatibilist strategy, according to which the (...) range of grammatical properties accessible to a speaker is dependent upon their cognitive apparatus, but the properties so accessible are also mind-independent. (shrink)
In this paper, I define tacit knowledge as a kind of causal-explanatory structure, mirroring the derivational structure in the theory that is tacitly known. On this definition, tacit knowledge does not have to be explicitly represented. I then take the notion of a modular theory, and project the idea of modularity to several different levels of description: in particular, to the processing level and the neurophysiological level. The fundamental description of a connectionist network lies at a level between the processing (...) level and the physiological level. At this level, connectionism involves a characteristic departure from modularity, and a correlative absence of syntactic structure. This is linked to the fact that tacit knowledge descriptions of networks are only approximately true. A consequence is that strict causal systematicity in cognitive processes poses a problem for the connectionist programme. (shrink)
Many studies of language, whether in philosophy, linguistics, or psychology, have focused on highly developed human languages. In their highly developed forms, such as are employed in scientific discourse, languages have a unique set of properties that have been the focus of much attention. For example, descriptive sentences in a language have the property of being "true" or "false," and words of a language have senses and referents. Sentences in a language are structured in accord with (...) complex syntactic rules. Theorists focusing on language are naturally led to ask questions such as what constitutes the meanings of words and sentences and how are the principles of syntax encoded in the heads of language users. While there is an important function for inquiries into the highly developed forms of these cultural products (Abrahamsen, 1987), such a focus can be quite misleading when we want to explain how these products have arisen or the human capacity to use language. The problem is that focusing on its most developed forms makes linguistic ability seem to be a _sui generis_ phenomenon, not related to, and hence not explicable in terms of other cognitive capacities. Chomsky's (1980) postulation of a specific language module equipped with specialized resources needed to process language and possessed only by hum ans is not a surprising result. (shrink)
What do these various heresies have in common? From Fodor's point of view, two things, obviously: (1) they are all wrong, wrong, wrong! and (2) they are endorsed by people who are otherwise quite decent company. That would be thread enough to tie Fodor's targets together if he were right, but as one who finds more than a morsel of truth in each of the derided doctrines, I must seek elsewhere for a uniting principle, and I think I have found (...) it: they are all doctrines that make Fodor's Granny exclaim "Well I never!" and lurch alarmingly in her rocker. The cat is out of the bag. Jerry Fodor is a Granny's boy, a romantic conservative whose slogan might well be. (shrink)
We provide a syntax and a derivation system fora formal language of mathematics called Weak Type Theory (WTT). We give the metatheory of WTT and a number of illustrative examples.WTT is a refinement of de Bruijn''s Mathematical Vernacular (MV) and hence:– WTT is faithful to the mathematician''s language yet isformal and avoids ambiguities.
An explanation for the uncertain progress of formalist linguistics is sought in an examination of the concept of syntax. The idea of analyzing language formally was made possible by developments in 20th century logic. It has been pointed out by many that the analogy between natural language and a formal system may be imperfect, but the objection made here is that the very concept of syntax, when applied to any non-abstract system of communication, is flawed as (...) it is commonly used. Syntax is properly defined with respect to an individual transformation rule that might be applied to some message. Collections of syntax rules, however, are inevitably due to categories imposed by an observer, and do not correspond to functional features found in non-abstract systems. As such, these categories should not be relied upon as aids to understanding any natural system. (shrink)
While monadic second-order logic (MSO) has played a prominent role in model theoretic syntax, modal logics have been used in this context since its inception. When comparing propositional dynamic logic (PDL) to MSO over trees, Kracht (1997) noted that there are tree languages that can be defined in MSO that can only be defined in PDL by adding new features whose distribution is predictable. He named such features “inessential features”. We show that Kracht’s observation can be extended to other (...) modal logics of trees in two ways. First, we demonstrate that for each stronger logic, there exists a tree language that can only be defined in a weaker logic with inessential features. Second, we show that any tree language that can be defined in a stronger logic, but not in some weaker logic, can be defined with inessential features. Additionally, we consider Kracht’s definition of inessential features more closely. It turns out that there are features whose distribution can be predicted, but who fail to be inessential in Kracht’s sense. We will look at ways to modify his definition. (shrink)
Is native speaker variation in understanding complex sentences due to individual differences in working memory capacity or in syntactic competence? The answer to this question has very important consequences for both theoretical and applied concerns in linguistics and education. This book is distinctive in giving an historical and interdisciplinary perspective on the rule- based and experience-based debate and in supporting an integrated account. In the study reported here, variation was found to be due to differences in syntactic competence and the (...) author argues that sentence comprehension is a learned skill, displaying many of the general characteristics of cognitive skills. The book will be stimulating reading for psycholinguists, theoretical linguists, applied linguists and educators. (shrink)
This paper reminds, puts in order, sketches and also initiates some researches from the field of logic and philosophy of language. It lays emphasis on the logical-linguistic and ontological developmental lines originated with Polish researchers. The author discusses two opposite orientations of the former line in the process of formalization of language, called here nominalistic and Platonistic. The paper mentions the author's result (1989; 1991) concerning theoretical equivalence of two axiomatic approaches to languagesyntax which take (...) into consideration these two different philosophical orientations, respectively. It also introduces certain formal-logical foundations of language semantics, discusses and develops the problem of the syntactic and semantic categorial agreement, i.e. the agreement of the syntactic category of each language expression with the ontological category assigned to the reference of this expression. The author, in particular, gives a solution to this problem for quantifiers. (shrink)
This article is dedicated to Euclidâs Elements, to translations of this work into Czech, and to the translators who have taken on the task of translation. It contains a short overview of the results achieved during a three-year project supported by the Czech Grant Agency.We explored how Euclidâs Elements were spread around the Czech lands.We will try to describe the circumstances that lay behind attempts to translate the Elements into the Czechlanguage.
Predicate logic has proved a very useful tool for the expression of theories of natural language semantics. Hurford's suggestion that predicate–argument structures mirror certain properties of the human sensorimotor architecture can be seen as an explanation of why this is so. Although I support this view, I think that the correspondences that Hurford draws between linguistic and sensorimotor structures not only involve natural language semantics, but include some elements of natural languagesyntax as well.
This paper describes a novel pedagogical software program that can be seen as an online companion to one of the standard textbooks of formal natural language semantics, Heim and Kratzer (1998). The Penn Lambda Calculator is a multifunctional application designed for use in standard graduate and undergraduate introductions to formal semantics: Teachers can use the application to demonstrate complex semantic derivations in the classroom and modify them interactively, and students can use it to work on problem sets provided by (...) the teacher. The program supports demonstrations and exercises in two main areas: (1) performing beta reduction in the simply typed lambda calculus; (2) application of the bottom-up algorithm for computing the compositional semantics of natural languagesyntax trees. The program is able to represent the full range of phenomena covered in the Heim and Kratzer textbook by function application, predicate modification, and lambda abstraction. This includes phenomena such as intersective adjectives, relative clauses and quantifier raising. In the student use case, emphasis has been placed on providing “live” feedback for incorrect answers. Heuristics are used to detect the most frequent student errors and to return specific, interactive suggestions. (shrink)
Among the national scientific groups, it was the Prague Linguistic Circle that had the most decisive affinity to the work of the Moscow-Tartu school. This paper examines the work of one of the most tireless contemporary Czech interpreters of the Lutman school, Vladimir Macura (1945-1999), whose work on Czech literary and historical texts are outstanding examples of the reverberation of Lotmanian semiotics of culture in the Czech Republic. This is particularly the case in Macura's reevaluations of the (...) texts of the Czech National Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in two books, Znamení zrodu (Signs of Birth) (1995) and Český sen (The Czech Dream) (1998). In these works Macura looked at this critical period in Czech national history as a multi-layered semiotic text in both the verbal and visual spheres. The present paper is an attempt at an exploration of Macura's treatment in this manner of the following: the Czechlanguage, the city of Prague, the question of Czech national self-identification in general and as part of a larger category, the world of the Slavs. An important aspect of this project is an examination of Macura's exploration of the value functions of symbolic animals and plants in Czech Revival culture, and its relation to the axiology of Czech (Slavic) cultural identity. The paper is dedicated to Macura's memory. (shrink)
Do we conduct our conscious propositional thinking in natural language? Or is such language only peripherally related to human conscious thought-processes? In this paper I shall present a partial defence of the former view, by arguing that the only real alternative is eliminativism about conscious propositional thinking. Following some introductory remarks, I shall state the argument for this conclusion, and show how that conclusion can be true. Thereafter I shall defend each of the three main premises in turn.
EVERY speaker of a language knows a bewildering variety of linguistic facts, and will come to know many more. It is knowledge that connects sound and meaning. Questions about the nature of this knowledge cannot be separated from fundamental questions about the nature of language. The conception of language we should adopt depends on the part it plays in explaining our knowledge of language. This chapter explores options in accounting for language, and our knowledge of (...)language, and defends the view that individuals’ languages are constituted by the standing knowledge they carry from one speech situation to another. (shrink)
Metaethics is the study of metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language, insofar as they relate to the subject matter of moral or, more broadly, normative discourse – the subject matter of what is good, bad, right or wrong, just, reasonable, rational, what we must or ought to do, or otherwise. But out of these four ‘core’ areas of philosophy, it is plausibly the philosophy of language that is most central to metaethics – and (...) not simply because ‘metaethics’ was for a long time construed more narrowly as a name for the study of moral language. The philosophy of language is central to metaethics because both the advantages of and the open problems facing different metaethical theories differ sharply over the answers those theories give to central questions in the philosophy of language. In fact, among the open problems over which such theories differ, are included particularly further problems in the philosophy of language. This article briefly surveys a range of broad categories of views in metaethics and both catalogues some of the principal issues faced by each in the philosophy of language, as well as how those arise out of their answers to more basic questions in the philosophy of language. I make no claim to completeness, only to raising a variety of important issues. (shrink)
In Carnap’s autobiography, he tells the story how one night in January 1931, “the whole theory of language structure” in all its ramifications “came to [him] like a vision”. The shorthand manuscript he produced immediately thereafter, he says, “was the first version” of Logical Syntax of Language. This document, which has never been examined since Carnap’s death, turns out not to resemble Logical Syntax at all, at least on the surface. Wherein, then, did the momentous insight (...) of 21 January 1931 consist? We seek to answer this question by placing Carnap’s shorthand manuscript in the context of his previous efforts to accommodate scientific theories and meta- linguistic claims within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus theory of meaning. The breakthrough of January 1931 consists, from this viewpoint, in the rejection of the Tractatus theory in favor of the meta-mathematical perspective of Hilbert, Gödel, and Tarski. This was not yet the standpoint of the published Logical Syntax, as we show, but led naturally to the “principle of tolerance” and thus to Carnap’s mature philosophy, in which the inconsistencies between this first view and the principle of tolerance, which survived into the published Syntax, were overcome. (shrink)
The Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) is an empirical thesis about thought and thinking. For their explication, it postulates a physically realized system of representations that have a combinatorial syntax (and semantics) such that operations on representations are causally sensitive only to the syntactic properties of representations. According to LOTH, thought is, roughly, the tokening of a representation that has a syntactic (constituent) structure with an appropriate semantics. Thinking thus consists in syntactic operations defined over representations. Most of (...) the arguments for LOTH derive their strength from their ability to explain certain empirical phenomena like productivity, systematicity of thought and thinking. (shrink)
We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g. words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g. speech perception). We find the hypothesis problematic. It ignores the many aspects of grammar that are not recursive, such as phonology, morphology, (...) case, agreement, and many properties of words. It is inconsistent with the anatomy and neural control of the human vocal tract. And it is weakened by experiments suggesting that speech perception cannot be reduced to primate audition, that word learning cannot be reduced to fact learning, and that at least one gene involved in speech and language was evolutionarily selected in the human lineage but is not specific to recursion. The recursion-only claim, we suggest, is motivated by Chomsky’s recent approach to syntax, the Minimalist Program, which de-emphasizes the same aspects of language. The approach, however, is sufficiently problematic that it cannot be used to support claims about evolution. We contest related arguments that language is not an adaptation, namely that it is “perfect,” non-redundant, unusable in any partial form, and badly designed for.. (shrink)
In a continuation of the conversation with Fitch, Chomsky, and Hauser on the evolution of language, we examine their defense of the claim that the uniquely human, language-specific part of the language faculty (the “narrow language faculty”) consists only of recursion, and that this part cannot be considered an adaptation to communication. We argue that their characterization of the narrow language faculty is problematic for many reasons, including its dichotomization of cognitive capacities into those that (...) are utterly unique and those that are identical to nonlinguistic or nonhuman capacities, omitting capacities that may have been substantially modified during human evolution. We also question their dichotomy of the current utility versus original function of a trait, which omits traits that are adaptations for current use, and their dichotomy of humans and animals, which conflates similarity due to common function and similarity due to inheritance from a recent common ancestor. We show that recursion, though absent from other animals’ communications systems, is found in visual cognition, hence cannot be the sole evolutionary development that granted language to humans. Finally, we note that despite Fitch et al.’s denial, their view of language evolution is tied to Chomsky’s conception of language itself, which identifies combinatorial productivity with a core of “narrow syntax.” An alternative conception, in which combinatoriality is spread across words and constructions, has both empirical advantages and greater evolutionary plausibility. q 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)
Jerry Fodor's argument for an innate language of thought continues to be a hurdle for researchers arguing that natural languages provide us with richer conceptual systems than our innate cognitive resources. I argue that because the logical/formal terms of natural languages are given a usetheory of meaning, unlike predicates, logical/formal terms might be learned without a mediating internal representation. In that case, our innate representational system might have less logical structure than a natural language, making it possible that (...) we augment our innate representational system and improve our ability to think by learning a natural language. (shrink)
In a continuation of the conversation with Fitch, Chomsky, and Hauser on the evolution of language, we examine their defense of the claim that the uniquely human, language-specific part of the language faculty (the “narrow language faculty”) consists only of recursion, and that this part cannot be considered an adaptation to communication. We argue that their characterization of the narrow language faculty is problematic for many reasons, including its dichotomization of cognitive capacities into those that (...) are utterly unique and those that are identical to nonlinguistic or nonhuman capacities, omitting capacities that may have been substantially modified during human evolution. We also question their dichotomy of the current utility versus original function of a trait, which omits traits that are adaptations for current use, and their dichotomy of humans and animals, which conflates similarity due to common function and similarity due to inheritance from a recent common ancestor. We show that recursion, though absent from other animals’ communications systems, is found in visual cognition, hence cannot be the sole evolutionary development that granted language to humans. Finally, we note that despite Fitch et al.’s denial, their view of language evolution is tied to Chomsky’s conception of language itself, which identifies combinatorial productivity with a core of “narrow syntax.” An alternative conception, in which combinatoriality is spread across words and constructions, has both empirical advantages and greater evolutionary plausibility. q 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)
.................................................................................................... .................... 3 2. A Fregian Conception of Syntax/Semantics ....................................................................... 4 3. The Syntax/Semantics interface in Generative Grammar................................................... 7 3.1. Generative conceptions of grammar ............................................................................ 7 3.2. Building Strucures: External and Internal Merge ........................................................ 9 3.3. Notes on the literature.......................................................................................... ...... 12 4. A -language and the Interpretation of External and Internal Merge............................... 12 4.1. Logical Form................................................................................................ .............. 12 4.2. Syntax and Semantics of EL ...................................................................................... 13 4.3. Interpretations of External Merge.............................................................................. 15 4.4. Interpretation of Internal Merge................................................................................. 16 5. (...) The Two Most Important Rules of Construal: FI and QR ............................................... 17 5.1. QR resolves type-clashes ........................................................................................... 17 5.2. QR and Scope Ambiguities........................................................................................ 20 5.3. QR binds pronouns .................................................................................................... 21 6. Relative Clause and Quantifying into XP: The Empty Pronouns WH and PRO.............. 23 7. Intensional Contexts: The Type Language IL ................................................................... (shrink)
The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution, hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in humans contain a “mirror system” active for both execution and observation of manual actions, and that (...) F5 and Broca's area are homologous brain regions. This grounded the mirror system hypothesis of Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for grasping as a key neural “missing link” between the abilities of our nonhuman ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language, with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present article, however, goes “beyond the mirror” to offer hypotheses on evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain. Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen as evolving via a so-called simple system such as that found in chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex “object-oriented” sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called complex system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports pantomime. This is hypothesized to have provided the substrate for the development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech (which thus owes little to nonhuman vocalizations), with protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes. Key Words: gestures; hominids; language evolution; mirror system; neurolinguistics; primates; protolanguage; sign language; speech; vocalization. (shrink)
I advocate a theory of syntactic semantics as a way of understanding how computers can think (and how the Chinese-Room-Argument objection to the Turing Test can be overcome): (1) Semantics, considered as the study of relations between symbols and meanings, can be turned into syntax â a study of relations among symbols (including meanings) â and hence syntax (i.e., symbol manipulation) can suffice for the semantical enterprise (contra Searle). (2) Semantics, considered as the process of understanding one domain (...) (by modeling it) in terms of another, can be viewed recursively: The base case of semantic understanding âunderstanding a domain in terms of itself â is syntactic understanding. (3) An internal (or narrow ), first-person point of view makes an external (or wide ), third-person point of view otiose for purposes of understanding cognition. (shrink)
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of language. Philosophy of language concerns quite a large number of topics, including meaning, truth, content, reference, the syntax and semantics of various linguistic constructions, the nature and role of presupposition in communicative interchange, speech acts, figurative uses of language, questions about the ontology of languages, the epistemology of language understanding and language learning, the mental/psychologial basis of linguistic understanding and use, and so on. Since we (...) can't possibly study all of these topics, we'll focus our energy on topics that are most central in recent philosophical work on language, and that have far-reaching consequences for other topics in philosophy of language and other areas of philosophy. (shrink)
The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is “interpretive.” The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are (...) autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity. Key Words: evolution of language; generative grammar; parallel architecture; semantics; syntax. (shrink)
Much of the best contemporary work in the philosophy of language and content makes appeal to the theories developed in generative syntax. In particular, there is a presumption that-at some level and in some way-the structures provided by syntactic theory mesh with or support our conception of content/linguistic meaning as grounded in our first-person understanding of our communicative speech acts. This paper will suggest that there is no such tight fit. Its claim will be that, if recent generative (...) theories are on the right lines, syntactic structure provides both too much and too little to serve as the structural partner for content, at least as that notion is generally understood in philosophy. The paper will substantiate these claims by an assessment of the recent work of King, Stanley, and others. (shrink)
Following Aristotle (who himself was following Parmenides), philosophers have appealed to the distributional reflexes of expressions in determining their semantic status, and ultimately, the nature of the extra-linguistic world. This methodology has been practiced throughout the history of philosophy; it was clarified and made popular by the likes of Zeno Vendler and J.L. Austin, and is realized today in the toolbox of linguistically minded philosophers. Studying the syntax of natural language was fueled by the belief that there is (...) a conceptually tight connection between the syntax of our language and its semantics, and the belief that there is a similarly tight connection between the semantics of our language and metaphysical facts about the world. We are less confident than our colleagues about the relation syntax has to semantics and metaphysics. In particular, we do not believe that the current status of theoretical syntax (or semantics or metaphysics) provides much support for either of the above two beliefs. We will illustrate our view with a case study regarding the status of complex demonstratives. We will show that a recent and particularly subtle syntactically based argument for the semantic/metaphysical status of complex demonstratives does not in fact show what semantic category complex demonstratives are in. Since the devil always lies in the details, we cannot extract a general method for undermining any argument that is similar in spirit. However, our case study will act as a cautionary note against any theory that attempts to derive important philosophical consequences from the shapes of sentences. (shrink)
The syntax of Frege's scientific language iscommonly taken to be characterized by two oddities:the representation of the intended illocutionary roleof sentences by a special sign, the judgement-stroke,and the treatment of sentences as a species ofsingular terms. In this paper, an alternative view isdefended. The main theses are: (i) the syntax ofFrege's scientific language aims at an explication ofthe logical form of judgements; (ii) thejudgement-stroke is, therefore, a truth-operator, nota pragmatic operator; (iii) in Frege's first system,` ' (...) expresses that the circumstance is a fact, and in his second system that thetruth-value - is the True; (iv) in bothsystems, the judgement-stroke is construed as a signsui generis, not as a genuine predicate; (v) itscounterpart in natural language is the syntactic ``formof assertoric sentences'', not the (redundant)truth-predicate; (vi) neither in Frege's first nor inhis second system sentences are treated as singular terms. (shrink)
We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g. words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g. speech perception). We find the hypothesis problematic. It ignores the many aspects of grammar that are not recursive, such as phonology, morphology, (...) case, agreement, and many properties of words. It is inconsistent with the anatomy and neural control of the human vocal tract. And it is weakened by experiments suggesting that speech perception cannot be reduced to primate audition, that word learning cannot be reduced to fact learning, and that at least one gene involved in speech and language was evolutionarily selected in the human lineage but is not specific to recursion. The recursion-only claim, we suggest, is motivated by Chomsky’s recent approach to syntax, the Minimalist Program, which de-emphasizes the same aspects of language. The approach, however, is sufficiently problematic that it cannot be used to support claims about evolution. We contest related arguments that language is not an adaptation, namely that it is “perfect,” non-redundant, unusable in any partial form, and badly designed for.. (shrink)
This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural (...)language are discussed, and a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)
In Carnap’s autobiography, he tells the story how one night in January 1931, “the whole theory of language structure” in all its ramifications “came to [him] like a vision”. The shorthand manuscript he produced immediately thereafter, he says, “was the first version” of Logical Syntax of Language. This document, which has never been examined since Carnap’s death, turns out not to resemble Logical Syntax at all, at least on the surface. Wherein, then, did the momentous insight (...) of 21 January 1931 consist? We seek to answer this question by placing Carnap’s shorthand manuscript in the context of his previous efforts to accommodate scientific theories and metalinguistic claims within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus theory of meaning. The breakthrough of January 1931 consists, from this viewpoint, in the rejection of the Tractatus theory in favor of the meta-mathematical perspective of Hilbert, Gödel, and Tarski. This was not yet the standpoint of the published Logical Syntax, as we show, but led naturally to the “principle of tolerance” and thus to Carnap’s mature philosophy, in which the inconsistencies between this first view and the principle of tolerance, which survived into the published Syntax, were overcome. (shrink)
