Essays On Reference Language And Mind

Keith Donnellan is one of the major figures in 20th century philosophy of language and mind, a key member of the highly influential group that altered the course of philosophy of language and mind around 1970. An innovative philosopher, Donnellan's primary contributions were published in article form rather than books. This volume presents a highly focused collection of articles by Donnellan, beginning with his 1966 groundbreaking "Reference and Definite Descriptions," historically the first move in the direct reference direction. In the late sixties and early 1970's, the philosophy of language and mind went through a paradigm shift, with the then-dominant Fregean theory being questioned by what has come to be known as "the direct reference turn." Donnellan played a key role in this shift, focusing on the relation of reference--a touchstone in the philosophy of language--and the relation of "thinking about"--a key idea in the philosophy of mind. The debates about the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of direct reference ended up forming the agendas of the philosophies of language and mind. Donnellan's ideas are the heart of such ongoing debates. This volume, which collects his key contributions dating from the late 1960's through the early 1980's alongside an introduction by one of the editors, Joseph Almog, disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity. This collection will be of interest to philosophers of language and mind, and of contemporary metaphysics and epistemology, as well as of linguistics and cognitive psychology.

This volume presents a highly focused collection of articles by Donnellan. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the philosophy of language and mind went through a paradigm shift, with the then-dominant Fregean theory losing ground to the 'direct reference' theory sometimes referred to as the direct reference revolution. Donnellan played a key role in this shift, focusing on the relation of semantic reference, a touchstone in the philosophy of language and the relation of 'thinking about' - a touchstone in the philosophy of mind.

Over the past two decades, Ray Jackendoff has persistently tackled difficult issues in the theory of mind and related theories of cognitive processing. Chief among his contributions is a formal theory that elaborates the nature of language and its relationship to a broad set of other domains. Languages of the Mind provides convenient access to Jackendoff's work over the past five years on the nature of mental representations in a variety of cognitive domains, in the context of a detailed theory of the level of conceptual structure developed in his earlier books Semantics and Cognition and Consciousness and the Computational Mind. The first two chapters summarize the theory of levels of mental representation ("languages of the mind") and their relationships to each other and show how conceptual structure can be approached along lines familiar from syntactic and phonological theory. From this background, subsequent chapters develop issues in word learning (and its pertinence to the Piaget-Chomsky debate) and the relation of conceptual structure to the understanding of physical space. Further chapters apply the theory to domains outside of traditional cognitive science. They include an approach to social and cultural cognition modeled on first principles of linguistic theory, the beginnings of a formal description of psychodynamic phenomena, and a discussion of musical parsing and its relation to musical affect that bears on current disputes in linguistic parsing. The final chapter takes up a long-standing conflict between philosophical and psychological approaches to the study of mind, arguing that mental representations should be regarded purely in terms of the combinatorial organization of brain states, and that the philosophical insistence on the intentionality of mental states should be abandoned.

In this collection of Chomsky's lectures, the first three essays describe linguistic contributions to the study of the mind and the last three discuss the relationship among linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.

Outstanding and unique contribution to the philosophical study of language and mind by Noam Chomsky.

The fact that one would contemplate publication of a book such as this indicates both the maturity and the growth of activity that have taken place in the field of psycholinguistics over the past few decades. More over, the fact that psycholinguists and/or scholars of the history of ideas are interested in the history of their subject clearly demonstrates that much has been accomplished, and the time is indeed ripe for the reassess ment of whence we have come. In addition, perhaps this interest in our historical past suggests that psycholinguistics is at a critical stage in its development. There are many scholars who believe that this critical stage manifests itself primarily in a search for a new paradigm. It would seem only reasonable to suggest that when members of a profession are search ing for something new, more than likely they will take time to reflect on the past in the hope that it will facilitate the fulfillment of their quest. This book as such reflects a wide-ranging search for historical roots over a millenium of research in the psychology of language and thought. Furthermore, it also reflects an attempt to open the context by introducing the broader perspectives of the history of ideas and the history of science together with their reassessment of the method of science motivated from within psychology itself.

New research on different areas of cognition, focusing on language, with contributions that treat topics explored in Ray Jackendoff's pioneering research. This volume offers new research in cognitive science by leading scholars, exploring different areas of cognition with an emphasis on language. The contributions—in such fields as linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, evolution, and consciousness—reflect the thriving interdisciplinary scholarship in cognitive science today. Ray Jackendoff's pioneering cross-disciplinary work was instrumental in establishing the field, and Structures in the Mind, with contributions from Jackendoff's colleagues and former students, is a testament to his lasting influence. After an introduction that includes short reflections on Jackendoff's work by such scholars as Paul Bloom, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Partee, and Steven Pinker, the book presents chapters on linguistics, which build on Jackendoff's theories of conceptual semantics and parallel architectures; psycholinguistics, reaching from linguistics to psychology and neuroscience; and other topics as varied as the evolution of linguistic and musical abilities, consciousness, music theory, and the grammar of comics—with this particular chapter taking the form of a comic. The chapters present fresh data, bold claims, and stimulating theoretical discussions, offering a celebration of cognitive science today. Contributors Daniel Büring, Neil Cohn, Peter W. Culicover, Daniel Dennett, Cecily Jill Duffield, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Lila Gleitman, Jane Grimshaw, Yosef Grodzinsky, Katharina Hartmann, Albert Kim, Max Soowon Kim, Barbara Landau, Fred Lerdahl, Willem J. M. Levelt, Joan Maling, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Urpo Nikanne, Catherine O'Connor, Maria Mercedes Piñango, Daniel Silverman, Henk Verkuyl, Heike Wiese, Eva Wittenberg, Edgar B. Zurif, Joost Zwarts

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Original Publication Details -- Introduction -- Part I Merge in the Mind -- 1 Merge and Bare Phrase Structure -- 2 Merge and (A)symmetry -- 3 Generalized Search and Cyclic Derivation by Phase: A Preliminary Study -- 4 Merge, Labeling, and Projection -- 5 A Note on Weak vs. Strong Generation in Human Language -- 6 0-Search and 0-Merge -- Part II Merge in the Brain -- 7 The Cortical Dynamics in Building Syntactic Structures of Sentences: An MEG Study in a Minimal-Pair Paradigm -- 8 Syntactic Computation in the Human Brain: The Degree of Merger as a Key Factor -- 9 Computational Principles of Syntax in the Regions Specialized for Language: Integrating Theoretical Linguistics and Functional Neuroimaging -- Bibliography -- Author Index -- Subject Index