The Texture of the Lexicon

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Jackendoff ◽  
Jenny Audring
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Morphological Theory ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
The Mind

The Texture of the Lexicon explores three interwoven themes: a morphological theory, the structure of the lexicon, and an integrated account of the language capacity and its place in the mind. These themes together constitute the theory of Relational Morphology (RM), extending the Parallel Architecture of Jackendoff’s groundbreaking Foundations of Language. Part I (chapters 1–3) situates morphology in the architecture of the language faculty, and introduces a novel formalism that unifies the treatment of morphological patterns, from totally productive to highly marginal. Two major points emerge. First, traditional word formation rules and realization rules should be replaced by declarative schemas, formulated in the same terms as words. Hence the grammar should really be thought of as part of the lexicon. Second, the traditional emphasis on productive patterns, to the detriment of nonproductive patterns, is misguided; linguistic theory can and should encompass them both. Part II (chapters 4–6) puts the theory to the test, applying it to a wide range of familiar and less familiar morphological phenomena. Part III (chapters 7–9) connects RM with language processing, language acquisition, and a broad selection of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena beyond morphology. The framework is therefore attractive not only for its ability to account insightfully for morphological phenomena, but equally for its contribution to the integration of linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and human cognition.

Situating morphology

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Ray Jackendoff ◽  
Jenny Audring
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
Morphological Theory ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Shared Structure

The book has three interwoven themes: a morphological theory, the structure of the lexicon, and an integrated account of the language capacity and its place in the mind. These themes together constitute the theory of Relational Morphology (RM), itself an extension of the Parallel Architecture of Jackendoff’s Foundations of Language, and closely related to Construction Grammar and Construction Morphology. A fundamental feature is that phonology, syntax, and semantics are independent components of language, linked by interfaces. Another feature is the continuity between lexicon and grammar. RM extends these features to the internal structure of words. In particular, morphology is constituted of a morphosyntactic component and its interfaces to phonology, phrasal syntax, and semantics. Furthermore, RM expresses regularities among words not in terms of rules that derive morphologically complex words, but in terms of declarative schemas that capture patterns of shared structure. The chapter concludes with a survey of similarities and differences between phrasal syntax and morphosyntax.

scholarly journals From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Conrad Jackson ◽  
Joseph Watts ◽  
Johann-Mattis List ◽  
Ryan Drabble ◽  
Kristen Lindquist
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The Mind

Humans have been using language for thousands of years, but psychologists seldom consider what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into human cognition. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made these analyses more feasible and insightful than ever before. In particular, we describe how two forms of language analysis—comparative linguistics and natural language processing—are already contributing to how we understand emotion, creativity, and religion, and overcoming methodological obstacles related to statistical power and culturally diverse samples. We summarize resources for learning both of these methods, and highlight the best way to combine language analysis techniques with behavioral paradigms. Applying language analysis to large-scale and cross-cultural datasets promises to provide major breakthroughs in psychological science.

scholarly journals From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Conrad Jackson ◽  
Joseph Watts ◽  
Johann-Mattis List ◽  
Curtis Puryear ◽  
Ryan Drabble ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The Mind

Humans have been using language for thousands of years, but psychologists seldom consider what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into human cognition. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made these analyses more feasible and insightful than ever before. In particular, we describe how two forms of language analysis—comparative linguistics and natural language processing—are already contributing to how we understand emotion, creativity, and religion, and overcoming methodological obstacles related to statistical power and culturally diverse samples. We summarize resources for learning both of these methods, and highlight the best way to combine language analysis techniques with behavioral paradigms. Applying language analysis to large-scale and cross-cultural datasets promises to provide major breakthroughs in psychological science.

How does the faculty of language relate to rules, axioms, and constraints?

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prakash Mondal
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Meta Level ◽  
Grammar Formalisms ◽  
General Architecture ◽  
Abstract Formulation

This paper explores the link between rules of grammar, grammar formalisms and the architecture of the language faculty. In doing so, it provides a flexible meta-level theory of the language faculty through the postulation of general axioms that govern the interaction of different components of grammar. The idea is simply that such an abstract formulation allows us to view the structure of the language faculty independently of specific theoretical frameworks/formalisms. It turns out that the system of rules, axioms and constraints of grammar cannot be explicitly represented in a general architecture of the language faculty — which circumvents the ontological mismatch of mental representations and formal/axiomatic properties of language. Rather, the system of rules, axioms, constraints of grammar is intentionally projected by humans, and this projection realizes/instantiates what Dascal (1992) calls ‘psychopragmatics’. Relevant implications for linguistic theory, learnability and (computational) models of language processing are also explored.

The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: evidence from intrasentential code switching

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff MacSwan
Keyword(s):  
Word Formation ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Minimalist Approach ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Computational Resources

In this article, the author addresses the question of how the mind represents two languages in simultaneous bilingualism. Some linguistic theories of intrasentential code switching are reviewed, with a focus on the Minimalist approach of MacSwan (1999b); the author concludes that evidence from code switching suggests that bilinguals have discrete and separate Lexicons for the languages they speak, each with its own internal principles of word formation, as well as separate phonological systems. However, the author argues that computational resources common to the two languages generate monolingual and bilingual syntactic derivations alike. Advantages of the Minimalist Program for the analysis of code switching data are discussed at some length.

scholarly journals How language processing can shape a common model of cognition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A Kelly ◽  
David Reitter
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Complex Behaviour ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
The Mind

What role does the study of natural language play in the task of developing a unified theory and common model of cognition? Language is perhaps the most complex behaviour that humans exhibit, and, as such, is one of the most difficult problems for understanding human cognition. Linguistic theory can both inform and be informed by unified models of cognition. We discuss (1) how computational models of human cognition can provide insight into how humans produce and comprehend language and (2) how the problem of modelling language processing raises questions and creates challenges for widely used computational models of cognition. Evidence from the literature suggests that behavioural phenomena, such as recency and priming effects, and cognitive constraints, such as working memory limits, affect how language is produced by humans in ways that can be predicted by computational cognitive models. But just as computational models can provide new insights into language, language can serve as a test for these models. For example, simulating language learning requires the use of more powerful machine learning techniques, such as deep learning and vector symbolic architectures, and language comprehension requires a capacity for on-the-fly situational model construction. In sum, language plays an important role in both shaping the development of a common model of the mind, and, in turn, the theoretical understanding of language stands to benefit greatly from the development of a common model.

„Il linguaggio tra natura e storia“ – sprachtheoretische und sprachphilosophische Reflexionen Tullio De Mauros im Spannungsfeld von europäischer Tradition und angloamerikanischem Sprachdiskurs

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Becker
Keyword(s):  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Special Value ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Generative Approach ◽  
Human Language Faculty

AbstractThis article analyses Tullio DeMauro’s linguistic thought and highlights the originality of his contribution to the current linguistic debate, which revolves around two essential questions: 1.What is special about the human language (faculty)?, and 2. Why and how did it arise in the selectional process of evolution? De Mauro’s approach to language between the poles of “nature” and “history” is contrasted with the basic tenets and ideas of two main paradigms of the contemporary Anglo-American linguistic discourse, namely Noam Chomsky’s generative approach (in its minimalist version) and Ray Jackendoff’s theory of the Tripartite Parallel Architecture of language. In this way, the peculiarities and the special value of De Mauro’s approach come to the fore, combining and synthesizing the European tradition of linguistic thought, especially with its strong semiotic imprint, and modern “naturalist” linguistic theory.

Précis of Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution,

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 651-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Jackendoff
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Incremental Evolution ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
The Mind

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.

From Neural Synapses to Culture-Historical Boundaries: An Archaeological Comment on the Plastic Mind

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 415-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Løvschal
Keyword(s):  
Social Perception ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Historical Times ◽  
Cultural Incorporation ◽  
The Mind

This paper contributes with a study of how something that is initially introduced as a ‘technology of spatial distribution’ develops into a ‘technology of the mind’. Boundaries are a phenomenon deeply rooted in social perception and cognitive categorization, which also involves material processes that can sometimes be studied in an archaeological record. In later prehistory, the physical instantiation of this technology offered a solution to a wide range of economic and social problems, posed by an increasingly filled-in and more permanently settled landscape. Important aspects of its initial conceptual and cultural incorporation lasted more than a millennium. However, once this technology attached conceptually as well as culturally, it entailed a quantitative acceleration and became part of a long-term development, the social and juridical consequences of which can be traced far up in historical times. This case is used to discuss the importance of unfolding both the plastic aspects of human cognition and the slow, protracted and long-term aspects involved in cultural changes.

Language and creativity: a Construction Grammar approach to linguistic creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The Way

AbstractCreativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and to fundamentally change the way we live. One particular domain of human cognition that has received considerable attention is linguistic creativity. The present paper discusses how the leading cognitive linguistic theory, Construction Grammar, can provide an explanatory account of creativity that goes beyond the issue of linguistic productivity. At the same time, it also outlines how Construction Grammar can benefit from insights from Conceptual Blending.

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