Phrase structure grammars as indicative of uniquely human thoughts

Abstract

I argue that the ability to compute phrase structure grammars is indicative of a particular kind of thought. This type of thought that is only available to cognitive systems that have access to the computations that allow the generation and interpretation of the structural descriptions of phrase structure grammars. The study of phrase structure grammars, and formal language theory in general, is thus indispensable to studies of human cognition, for it makes explicit both the unique type of human thought and the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which this thought is made possible.

Why should syntactic islands exist?

“…Language provides us with a unique way of thinking and talking about the world that is unavailable to non‐linguistic animals. Though of course animals have thoughts of many kinds (many of which are shared with humans), but since they lack the language faculty there is a specific kind of thought that they lack (Asoulin, 2019; Hinzen, 2013; Rogers & Hauser, 2010). Let us see how this rationalist understanding of the role of language in cognition is manifested in current biolinguistics.…”

Are There Collective or Partially Collective Interpretations of Universal Quantificational “Each” Sentences?

“…This idea is also discussed in the literature under the label of '"internalist" semantics'. (For discussions of internalist semantics, see Asoulin (2020), Glanzberg (2021) and Collins (2021)). Pietroski's (2018) account is one formulation of an internalist semantics.…”

“…(see previous footnote). I will note at the outset that this is a very difficult question to address as the affect that the lexical item "each" has on cognition during initial interpretation may be completely subconscious (confer Asoulin (2020), 20 on this phenomenon with respect to sentence interpretation more generally.) 1011…”

“…Then, these schemas, …can be compared with the mental representations of arbitrary new objects to produce a judgement of conformance or nonconformance" (ibid.). I assume with Jackendoff (1990), Pietroski (2018) and Asoulin (2020), that there may be a reasonably rich conceptual system outside of the language faculty that plays a role in semantic interpretation (see also Hornstein and Pietroski (2009)). Building from Hornstein and Pietroski (2009) and Pietroski (2018), these concepts may not only help us think about particular individuals and events, yet also how individuals can "participate" in events.…”

“…The theoretical proposal that linguistic meanings are "cognitive instructions" to thought systems is discussed in a number of works (Chomsky (1996(Chomsky ( , 2012(Chomsky ( , 2021, McGilvray (1998), Hornstein and Pietroski (2009), Pietroski (2005Pietroski ( , 2018, Asoulin (2020), Lidz et al (2011), Knowlton et al (2021 abc), Knowlton, Hunter, Odic, Wellwood, Halberda, Pietroski, Lidz (2021), Knowlton and Gomes (2022), Papafragou (2022, 2023)). I intend for this thesis to build from these works.…”