This study seeks to clarify the nature of linguistic synesthesia using a lexical-conceptual account. Based on a lexical analysis of Mandarin synesthetic usages, we find that linguistic synesthesia maps the metaphorical meaning between two domains; and linguistic synesthetic mappings and conceptual metaphoric mappings have similar behaviors when sense modalities are treated as conceptual domains that contain a set of mappings constrained by Mapping Principles. This lexical-conceptual account is designed to capture the (...) fact that linguistic synesthesia involves mapping between lexicalized concepts of sensory properties, instead of the real-time sensory input that is processed in neurological synesthesia. The incorporation of a lexical semantic view with the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory not only offers a coherent and comprehensive account for the nature of linguistic synesthesia, but also handles aspects of linguistic synesthesia previously only accounted for by non-metaphorical accounts. These design features make this proposal the most comprehensive account to fit the current data. Furthermore, by showing linguistic synesthesia as a type of metaphor, our study strengthens the role of conceptual metaphors as the link between the perceived world and our conceptualization of that world. (shrink)

Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames (...) is developed. The frame model can be extended to account for typicality effects. Applying the paradigm of object-related neural synchronization, furthermore, a biologically motivated model for the cortical implementation of frames is developed. Cortically distributed synchronization patterns may be regarded as the fingerprints of concepts. (shrink)

Abstract:There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well‐known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and (...) object categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. (shrink)

There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well-known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and (...) object categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. (shrink)

Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation; and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 msec after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological (...) encoding, phonetic encoding, and articulation itself. In addition, the speaker exerts some degree of output control, by monitoring of self-produced internal and overt speech. The core of the theory, ranging from lexical selection to the initiation of phonetic encoding, is captured in a computational model, called WEAVER++. Both the theory and the computational model have been developed in interaction with reaction time experiments, particularly in picture naming or related word production paradigms, with the aim of accounting for the real-time processing in normal word production. A comprehensive review of theory, model, and experiments is presented. The model can handle some of the main observations in the domain of speech errors (the major empirical domain for most other theories of lexical access), and the theory opens new ways of approaching the cerebral organization of speech production by way of high-temporal-resolution imaging. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor (Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) famously argued that lexical concepts are unstructured. After examining the advantages and disadvantages of both the classical approach to concepts and Fodor's conceptual atomism, I argue that some lexical concepts are, in fact, structured. Roughly stated, I argue that structured lexical concepts bear a necessary biconditional entailment relation to their structural constituents. I develop this account of the structure of lexical (...) concepts within the framework of Pavel Tichy's (The foundations of Frege's logic. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1988) theory of constructions. I argue that concepts are constructions which can be combined by way of Tichy's construction-forming operations of composition and closure and an additional operation, simplification, which I propose in section 6. The last of these construction-forming operations plays a central role in my account of lexical concept structure. Stated generally, structured lexical concepts are a result of simplifying their structural constituents. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to show that there are many phenomena that pertain to the construction of truth-conditional compounds that follow characteristic patterns, and whose explanation requires appealing to knowledge structures organized in specific ways. We review a number of phenomena, ranging from non-homogenous modification and privative modification to polysemy and co-predication that indicate that knowledge structures do play a role in obtaining truth-conditions. After that, we show that several extant accounts that invoke rich lexical meanings (...) to explain such phenomena face problems related to inflexibility and lack of predictive power. We review different ways in which one might react to such problems as regards lexical meanings: go richer, go moderately richer, go thinner, and go moderately thinner. On the face of it, it looks like moderate positions are unstable, given the apparent lack of a clear cutoff point between the semantic and the conceptual, but also that a very thin view and a very rich view may turn out to be indistinguishable in the long run. As far as we can see, the most pressing open questions concern this last issue: can there be a principled semantic/world knowledge distinction? Where could it be drawn: at some upper level (e.g. enriched qualia structures) or at some basic level (e.g. constraints)? How do parsimony considerations affect these two different approaches? A thin meanings approach postulates intermediate representations whose role is not clear in the interpretive process, while a rich meanings approach to lexical meaning seems to duplicate representations: the same representations that are stored in the lexicon would form part of conceptual representations. Both types of parsimony problems would be solved by assuming a direct relation between word forms and (parts of) conceptual or world knowledge, leading to a view that has been attributed to Chomsky (e.g. by Katz 1980) in which there is just syntax and encyclopedic knowledge. (shrink)

This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have (...) no internal structure. I argue that informational semantics needs to be supplemented by allowing content-constitutive rules of inference (“meaning postulates”). This is because the content of one important class of concepts, the logical terms, is not plausibly informational. And since, it is argued, no principled distinction can be drawn between logical concepts and the rest, the problem that this raises is a general one. An immediate difficulty is that Quine’s classic arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction suggest that there can be no principled basis for distinguishing content-constitutive rules from the rest. I show that this concern can be overcome by taking a psychological approach: there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a particular inference is governed by a mentally-represented inference rule, albeit one that analytic philosophy does not have the resources to determine. I then consider the implications of this approach for concept acquisition. One mechanism underlying concept acquisition is the development of perceptual detectors for the objects that we encounter. I investigate how this might work, by drawing on recent ideas in ethology on ‘learning instincts’, and recent insights into the neurological basis for perceptual learning. What emerges is a view of concept acquisition as involving a complex interplay between innate constraints and environmental input. This supports Fodor’s recent move away from radical concept nativism: concept acquisition requires innate mechanisms, but does not require that concepts themselves be innate. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of metonymy in determining a syntactic argument alternation (“conductor-vehiclealternation”) which occurs in English and Portuguese:o piloto acelerou a Ferrari“the driver speeded up the Ferrari”/a Ferrari acelerou“the Ferrari speeded up/sped away”. Since the verbs in theconductor-vehiclealternation haveconductorandvehiclearguments (controller and controlled entities), a metonymic process can occur, allowing thevehicleexpression to provide access to theconductorparticipant. To explain how metonymy allows a verb with two participants to be integrated into a construction with a single argument, we assume that metonymy (...) gathers information about both entities involved; thevehicleexpression provides mental access to bothvehicleandconductor(“fusion”). We also discuss cognitive and pragmatic factors involving the choice of a construction over another. Constructions withvehicleexpressions as subject are used when thevehicleis salient or theconductoris unknown. This also explains whydirigir“drive” does not alternate in Portuguese, contrarily to prediction and differently from Englishdrive. We provide a comparative account of the behavior of this verb in both languages.Dirigir, differently fromdrive, conceptualizes semantic components incompatible with a situation in which the agent/conductoris not salient or is unknown. This research adds to the ongoing body of literature on the role of metonymy in grammar and is a contribution to the understanding of the metonymic process, as a fusion, and also to argument alternation processes and lexical-constructional integration. (shrink)

When dealing with ‘meaning’ or related notions, one cannot ignore what for a long time was the dominant paradigm in semantics. According to such paradigm, truth-conditional formal semantics for natural language is a theory of semantic competence. In this article, I shall discuss a foundational problem for such semantic program. I shall first be following authors who claim that truth-conditional formal semantics is unable to provide a complete account of lexical competence, and, therefore, it suffers from incompleteness. Moreover, (...) as a few authors observed, a coherent completion of lexical meaning/competence cannot be easily provided in the philosophical framework of truth-conditional semantics. The problem is a consequence of Kripke’s and Putnam’s arguments against the view that semantic values of words are cognitively determined. I shall argue that these arguments undermine the notion that formal semantics can be, at the same time, a theory of truth-conditions and a theory of semantic competence. I shall outline and critically discuss two general attempts to solve this problem, which I shall refer to as the social/ideal route and the concepts route. The conclusions of the article are deliberately open. I shall argue that both these attempts are exposed to conceptual troubles and counterintuitive consequences, and so the lexical problem still remains a deep and unresolved issue for semantics. (shrink)

Jackendoff (1987, 1990) has brought up various problems with the current use of thematic roles (Kiparsky, 1987; Bresnan & Kanerva, 1989 and references cited therein) and suggested a different way of thinking of thematic roles as structural configurations in his semantic Lexical Conceptual Structures (LCSs). Conversely, Joshi (1989) has claimed that Jackendoff’s LCSs alone are insufficient, and that an analysis of certain facts in Marathi additionally requires the existence of a level of predicate-argument structure (PAS). Below we will (...) mention a few of Jackendoff’s arguments against the current conception of thematic roles. We will then look at Joshi’s arguments about the necessity of a level of PAS in addition to LCS and conclude that providing Jackendoff’s LCSs are integrated into a suitable syntactic theory, neither of her points are problematic to Jackendoff.1 From there we will go on to re-examine some of the facts of Marathi, and show that certain facts that have merely been stipulated or left unanalyzed when using thematic roles, receive a rather elegant treatment when described via a combination of their syntax and LCS. (shrink)

Ad hoc concepts are highly-context dependent representations humans construct to deal with novel or uncommon situations and to interpret linguistic stimuli in communication. In the last decades, such concepts have been investigated both in experimental cognitive psychology and within pragmatics by proponents of so-called relevance theory. These two research lines have however proceeded in parallel, proposing two unconnected strategies to account for the construction and use of ad hoc concepts. The present work explores the relations between these two approaches (...) and the possibility of merging them into a unique account of the internal structure of ad hoc representations and of the key processes involved in their constructions. To this purpose, we first present an integrated two-level account of the construction of ad hoc representations from lexical concepts; then, we show how our account can be embedded in a conceptual space framework that allows for a natural, geometrical interpretation of the main steps in such a construction process. After discussing in detail two main examples of the construction of ad hoc concepts within conceptual spaces, we conclude with some remarks on possible extensions of our approach. (shrink)

Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English ‘table leg’, ‘mountain face’) have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should (...) be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated “algorithmically”. I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects “stripped of their bodily associations” (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the “algorithm” in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories—an experiential ground which generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration. (shrink)

Theories of sentence production that involve a convergence of activation from conceptual‐semantic and syntactic‐sequential units inspired a connectionist model that was trained to produce simple sentences. The model used a learning algorithm that resulted in a sharing of responsibility (or “division of labor”) between syntactic and semantic inputs for lexical activation according to their predictive power. Semantically rich, or “heavy”, verbs in the model came to rely on semantic cues more than on syntactic cues, whereas semantically impoverished, or (...) “light”, verbs relied more on syntactic cues. When the syntactic and semantic inputs were lesioned, the model exhibited patterns of production characteristic of agrammatic and anomic aphasic patients, respectively. Anomic models tended to lose the ability to retrieve heavy verbs, whereas agrammatic models were more impaired in retrieving light verbs. These results obtained in both sentence production and single‐word naming simulations. Moreover, simulated agrammatic lexical retrieval was more impaired overall in sentences than in single‐word tasks, in agreement with the literature. The results provide a demonstration of the division‐of‐labor principle, as well as general support for the claim that connectionist learning principles can contribute to the understanding of non‐transparent neuropsychological dissociations. (shrink)

The use of list-learning paradigms to explore false memory has revealed several critical findings about the contributions of similarity and relatedness in memory phenomena more broadly. Characterizing the nature of “similarity and relatedness” can inform researchers about factors contributing to memory distortions and about the underlying associative and semantic networks that support veridical memory. Similarity can be defined in terms of semantic properties, lexical/associative properties, or structural properties. By manipulating the type of list and its relationship to a non-studied (...) critical item, we review the effects of these types of similarity on veridical and false memory. All forms of similarity reviewed here result in reliable error rates and the effects on veridical memory are variable. The results across a variety of paradigms and tests provide partial support for a number of theoretical explanations of false memory phenomena, but none of the theories readily account for all results. (shrink)

BackgroundThe methodology of medical ethics during the last few decades has shifted from a predominant use of normative-philosophical analyses to an increasing involvement of empirical methods. The articles which have been published in the course of this so-called 'empirical turn' can be divided into conceptual accounts of empirical-normative collaboration and studies which use socio-empirical methods to investigate ethically relevant issues in concrete social contexts.DiscussionA considered reference to normative research questions can be expected from good quality empirical research in medical (...) ethics. However, a significant proportion of empirical studies currently published in medical ethics lacks such linkage between the empirical research and the normative analysis. In the first part of this paper, we will outline two typical shortcomings of empirical studies in medical ethics with regard to a link between normative questions and empirical data: (1) The complete lack of normative analysis, and (2) cryptonormativity and a missing account with regard to the relationship between 'is' and 'ought' statements. Subsequently, two selected concepts of empirical-normative collaboration will be presented and how these concepts may contribute to improve the linkage between normative and empirical aspects of empirical research in medical ethics will be demonstrated. Based on our analysis, as well as our own practical experience with empirical research in medical ethics, we conclude with a sketch of concrete suggestions for the conduct of empirical research in medical ethics.SummaryHigh quality empirical research in medical ethics is in need of a considered reference to normative analysis. In this paper, we demonstrate how conceptual approaches of empirical-normative collaboration can enhance empirical research in medical ethics with regard to the link between empirical research and normative analysis. (shrink)

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in and likelihood of co-occurrence —determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech-to-meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory (...) in tasks like lexical decision that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time-sensitive co-occurrence-driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general-to-specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether humans are more likely to trust people who are coordinated with them. We examined a well-known type of linguistic coordination, lexical entrainment, typically involving the elaboration of “conceptual pacts,” or partner-specific agreements on how to conceptualize objects. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical entrainment in a referential communication task and measured the effect of this manipulation on epistemic and practical trust. Our results showed that participants were more likely to trust a coordinated (...) partner than an uncoordinated one, but only when the latter broke previously established conceptual pacts. (shrink)

The terms ‘self’ and ‘moi’ appeared within the lexica of French and English at the end of the sixteenth century, for example in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. This paper takes a sceptical approach to lexical arguments about the history of the self and SELF-concepts. Initially, the relationship of SELF to the question of ‘paradigms’ and ‘conceptual schemes’ is discussed via recent work in developmental psychology and classic discussions within analytic philosophy. The questions raised in the theoretical discussion (...) are then re-examined through short readings of texts that do not contain lexicalized SELF-vocabulary, by the sixteenth-century French writers Maurice Scève and Michel de Montaigne. It is suggested that the importance of lexical arguments to the history of selves and SELF-concepts has been exaggerated, and that cognitive study has the potential to transform the study of the first-person stance and its history. (shrink)

A fundamental part of the process of referring to an entity is to categorise it (for instance, as the woman). Where multiple categorisations exist, this implicitly involves the adoption of a conceptual perspective. A challenge for the automatic Generation of Referring Expressions is to identify a set of referents coherently, adopting the same conceptual perspective. We describe and evaluate an algorithm to achieve this. The design of the algorithm is motivated by the results of psycholinguistic experiments.

A fundamental part of the process of referring to an entity is to categorise it (for instance, as the woman). Where multiple categorisations exist, this implicitly involves the adoption of a conceptual perspective. A challenge for the automatic Generation of Referring Expressions is to identify a set of referents coherently, adopting the same conceptual perspective. We describe and evaluate an algorithm to achieve this. The design of the algorithm is motivated by the results of psycholinguistic experiments.

This article conceptualizes corporate accountability under international law and introduces an analytical framework translating corporate accountability into seven core elements. Using this analytical framework, it then systematically assesses four models that could be used in a future business and human rights treaty: the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights model, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights model, the progressive model, and the transformative model. It aims to contribute to the BHR treaty negotiation process by clarifying different options (...) and possible trade-offs between them, while taking into account political realities. Ultimately, the article argues in favour of the BHR treaty embracing a progressive model of corporate accountability, which combines ambitious development of international law with realistic prospects of state support. (shrink)

The information theoretic principle of rational adaptation predicts that individuals with aphasia adapt to their language impairments by relying more heavily on comparatively unimpaired non-linguistic knowledge to communicate. This prediction was examined by assessing the extent to which adults with chronic aphasia due to left-hemisphere stroke rely more on conceptual rather than lexical information during verb retrieval, as compared to age-matched neurotypical controls. A primed verb naming task examined the degree of facilitation each participant group received from either (...) conceptual event-related or lexical collocate cues, compared to unrelated baseline cues. The results provide evidence that adults with aphasia received amplified facilitation from conceptual cues compared to controls, whereas healthy controls received greater facilitation from lexical cues. This indicates that adaptation to alternative and relatively unimpaired information may facilitate successful word retrieval in aphasia. Implications for models of rational adaptation and clinical neurorehabilitation are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explains three ways to develop a conceptual role view of meaning in metaethics. First, it suggests that there’s a way to combine inspiration from noncognitivism with a particular form of the conceptual role view to form a noncognitivist view with distinctive advantages over other noncognitivist views. Second, it suggests that there’s also a way to combine a strong commitment to cognitivism with a different form of the conceptual role view to form a version of cognitivism (...) with distinctive advantages over other cognitivist views. Finally, it suggests that there's another way to think of the conceptual role view in metaethics is as opening up the space for a third way, beyond cognitivism and noncognitivism. (shrink)

While the concept of adaptive preferences is an important tool for criticizing injustice, it is often claimed that using the concept involves showing disrespect for persons judged to have adaptive preferences. In this paper, I propose an account of adaptive preferences that does the relevant political work while still showing persons two centrally important kinds of respect. My account is based in what I call an indirect substantive account of autonomy, which places substantive requirements on the options (...) available to a person, rather than on the option that she ultimately prefers. This allows us to pinpoint cases in which a person's circumstances have rendered her insufficiently autonomous, without saying that any conception of the good must be non-autonomous tout court. (shrink)

A critical element in building stronger health systems involves strengthening good governance to build capacity for transparent and fair health planning and priority setting. Over the past 20 years, the ethical framework Accountability for Reasonableness has been a prominent conceptual guide in strengthening fair and legitimate processes of health decision-making. While many of the principles embedded within the framework are congruent with Western conceptualizations of what constitutes procedural fairness, there is a paucity in the literature that captures the degree (...) of resonance between these principles and the views of decision makers from non-Western settings; particularly in Africa, where many countries have only recently, within the last 20-30 years, become more democratic. This paper contributes to the ethics literature by examining how Ethiopian decision makers conceptualize fair and legitimate health decision-making, and reflects on the degree of conceptual resonance between these views and the principles embedded in A4R. A qualitative case study approach from three districts in Ethiopia was undertaken. Fifty-eight decision makers from district, regional, zonal, and national levels were interviewed to describe their conceptualization of fairness and legitimacy in the district health planning process. Findings revealed that Ethiopians have a broad conception of fairness and legitimacy that while congruent with procedural justice, also aligned with principles of distributive and organizational justice. Researchers and practitioners seeking to strengthen procedural fairness in health priority setting must therefore recognize the significance of other philosophical dimensions influencing how fairness and legitimacy of health decision-making are constructed within the Ethiopian setting. (shrink)

After a quick overview of the field of study known as “Lexical Semantics”, where we advocate the need of accessing additional information besides syntax and Montague-style semantics at the lexical level in order to complete the full analysis of an utterance, we summarize the current formulations of a well-known theory of that field. We then propose and justify our own model of the Generative Lexicon Theory, based upon a variation of classical compositional semantics, and outline its formalization. Additionally, (...) we discuss the theoretical place of informational, knowledge-related data supposed to exist within the lexicon as well as within discourse and other linguistic constructs. The formalization of the structure of natural language utterances around a surface form (phenogrammatics), a deep structure (tectogrammatics) and the meaning thereof as a logical form (semantics) has developed from the original theories of Curry and Montague to form coherent, type-driven models. Most of these new theories rely upon variations of the compositional analysis of the sentence: from pheno to tectogrammatics, and then to semantics. Our contribution to this work aims at giving such a model a means to overcome the problems posed by polysemous lexical units during the semantical analysis of the tectogrammatical form. Building upon an assumed “deep structure”, we formalize parts of Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon Theory, linguistically motivated in Pustejovsky (The generative lexicon, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995), in a pre-processing of the semantics of the sentence. The mechanisms of Lexical Semantics we propose are an additional layer of classical Montague compositional semantics, and, as such, integrate smoothly within such an analysis; we proceed by converting the lexical data to modifiers of the logical form. This treatment of Lexical Semantics furthermore induces us to think that some sort of non-evident background knowledge of the common use of words is necessary to perform a correct semantic analysis of an utterance. This “commonsense metaphysics” would therefore not be strictly confined to pragmatics, as is often assumed. (shrink)

The correct locus (or loci) of binding theory has been a matter of much discussion. Theories can be seen as varying along at least two dimensions. The rst is whether binding theory is con gurationally determined (that is, the theory exploits the geometry of a phrase marker, appealing to such purely structural notions as c-command and government) or whether the theory depends rather on examining the relations between items selected by a predicate (where by selection I am intending to cover (...) everything from semantic dependencies to syntactic subcategorization). The second is the level of grammar on which binding is de ned. Attempting to roughly equate levels across di erent theories, suggestions have included the semantics/lexical conceptual structure (Jackendo 1992), thematic structure (Jackendo 1972, Wilkins 1988), argument structure/D-structure/initial grammatical relations (Manning 1994, Belletti and Rizzi 1988, Perlmutter 1984), surface syntax/grammatical relations, logical form, linear order, pragmatics (Levinson 1991), and discourse (Iida 1992). The data is su ciently varied and complex that many theories end up as mixtures, variously employing a combination of elements along both dimensions (for instance, Chomsky (1986) relies purely on con gurational notions for the relationship between an anaphor and its antecedent, but uses concepts from selection in the de nition of the binding domain of an anaphor). LFG has always rejected a con gurational account of binding. For instancError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMape, Simpson (1991) argues that a con gurational theory of binding in Warlpiri cannot be maintained, among other reasons because nite clauses lack a VP.. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of lexical words, i.e., words that contribute with content to the meaning of sentences. This debate has coincided with a renewal in the study of polysemy, which has taken place in the psycholinguistics camp mainly. There is already a fruitful interbreeding between two lines of research: the theoretical study of lexical word meaning, on the one hand, and the models of polysemy psycholinguists present, on the other. In this paper I (...) aim at deepening on this ongoing interbreeding, examine what is said about polysemy, particularly in the psycholinguistics literature, and then show how what we seem to know about the representation and storage of polysemous senses affects the models that we have about lexical word meaning. (shrink)

BackgroundType-Token Ratio, given its relatively simple hand computation, is one of the few LSA measures calculated by clinicians in everyday practice. However, it has significant well-documented shortcomings; these include instability as a function of sample size, and absence of clear developmental profiles over early childhood. A variety of alternative measures of lexical diversity have been proposed; some, such as Number of Different Words/100 can also be computed by hand. However, others, such as Vocabulary Diversity and the Moving Average Type (...) Token Ratio rely on complex resampling algorithms that cannot be conducted by hand. To date, no large-scale study of all four measures has evaluated how well any capture typical developmental trends over early childhood, or whether any reliably distinguish typical from atypical profiles of expressive child language ability.Materials and MethodsWe conducted linear and non-linear regression analyses for TTR, NDW, VocD, and MATTR scores for samples taken from 946 corpora from typically developing preschool children, engaged in adult-child toy play, from the Child Language Data Exchange System. These were contrasted with 504 samples from children known to have delayed expressive language skills. We also conducted a separate sub-analysis which examined possible contextual effects of sampling environment on lexical diversity.ResultsOnly VocD showed significantly different mean scores between the typically -developing children and delayed developing children group. Using TTR would actually misdiagnose typical children and miss children with known language impairment. However, computation of VocD as a function of toy interactions was significant and emerges as a further caution in use of lexical diversity as a valid proxy index of children’s expressive vocabulary skill.DiscussionThis large scale statistical comparison of computer-implemented algorithms for expressive lexical profiles in young children with traditional, hand-calculated measures showed that only VocD met criteria for evidence-based use in LSA. However, VocD was impacted by sample elicitation context, suggesting that non-linguistic factors, such as engagement with elicitation props, contaminate estimates of spoken lexical skill in young children. Implications and suggested directions are discussed. (shrink)

The semantics of idioms has traditionally treated the idiomatic phrase as a lexical item to which an idiomatic meaning is assigned, and in which remains inert the ordinary literal meaning of the phrase's constitutive words. I draw a distinction between metaphysical lexicalism and methodological lexicalism, and show how criticisms lodged against one kind of lexicalism leave the other intact. Once it is clarified that it is methodological lexicalism that is of interest, and what kind of evidence counts against methodological (...) lexicalism and semantic inertness, I criticize the traditional semantic approach to idioms. (shrink)

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive in language, and the nature of the representations of an ambiguous word's multiple meanings is yet to be fully understood. With a special focus on Chinese characters, the present study first established that native speaker's perception about a character's number of meanings was heavily influenced by the availability of its distinct word formations, while whether these meanings would be perceived to be closely related was driven by further conceptual analysis. These notions were operationalized as (...) two computed metrics, which assessed the degree of dispersion across individual word formations and the degree of propinquity across clusters of word formations, respectively, in a distributional semantic space. The observed correlations between the computed and the perceived metrics indicated that the utility of word formations to tap into meaning representations of Chinese characters was indeed cognitively plausible. The results have demonstrated the extent to which distributional semantics could inform about meaning representations of Chinese characters, which has theoretical implications for the representation of ambiguous words more generally. (shrink)

And I find myself knowing the things that I knew Which is all that you can know on this side of the blueIs there such a thing as direct, non-conceptual experience, or is all experience, by its very nature, conceptually mediated? Is some notion of non-conceptual sensory awareness required to account for our ability to represent and negotiate our physical environment, or is it merely an artifact of deep-seated but ultimately misguided Cartesian metaphysical assumptions? Perhaps conscious experience (...) in humans is inextricably tied to the representational or self-reflexive capacities of language; if so, does it necessarily follow that newborn infants and animals are not conscious? Is the very notion of non-conceptual... (shrink)

Samuel Todes’s book, Body and World, makes an important contribution to the current debate among analytic philosophers concerning non–conceptual intentional content and its relation to thought. Todes’s relevant theses are: (1) Our unified, active body, in moving to meet our needs, generates a unified, spatio–temporal field. (2) In that field we use our perceptual skills to make the determinable perceptual objects that show up relatively determinate. (3) Once we have made the objects of practical perception determinate, we can make (...) ‘practical perceptual judgements’ about them. Such ‘judgements’ have conditions of satisfaction, but they are non–conceptual in that they are a way of coping with an actual object in this situation, from this point of view, in this light, in this orientation, and so forth. (4) By withholding our activity, however, we can transform our practical perception into a detached, spectatorial perception of qualities that are experienced as independent of the object they qualify. (5) Thanks to our conceptual imagination, we can then treat these qualities as reidentifiable properties of reidentifiable objects that can be entertained by thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSome firms are initiating pro-stakeholder activities and policies that transcend conventional corporate social responsibility conceptions and seem inconsistent with their business interests or economic responsibilities. These initiatives, which are neither legally nor morally obligatory, are responding to calls for a more active role of business in society and for a broader interpretation of CSR. In fact, they benefit stakeholders in a superior and an innovative way and are difficult to reconcile with commonly used rationales in the extant CSR literature, such (...) as win-win opportunities, creating shared value, or corporate philanthropy. For better insight, we develop a qualified account of the concept of supererogation from ethical theory. This account, which examines voluntary responses to moral obligations from which a business is normally excused, is applied to identify the unique features of the initiatives that are not readily understood within conventional reasoning, which is generally focused on a business case. (shrink)

In this essay I analyze two emerging theistic accounts of the laws of logic, one precipitated by theistic conceptual realism and the other from an archetype-ectype paradigm in Reformed Scholasticism. The former posits the laws of logic as uncreated and necessary divine thoughts, whereas the latter thinks of those laws as contingent, accommodated forms of a pre-existing archetypal rationality. After the analysis of the two accounts, I offer an explication of the theological rationale motivating the archetype-ectype model of the (...) laws of logic, and apply that model to recent discussions on theological paradox, abstract objects, and the function of natural-theological argumentation in apologetics. Finally, I respond to three anticipated objections against the archetype-ectype model. (shrink)