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139Brass tacks in linguistic theory: Innate grammatical principlesIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 1--175. 2005.In the normal course of events, children manifest linguistic competence equivalent to that of adults in just a few years. Children can produce and understand novel sentences, they can judge that certain strings of words are true or false, and so on. Yet experience appears to dramatically underdetermine the com- petence children so rapidly achieve, even given optimistic assumptions about children’s nonlinguistic capacities to extract information and form generalizations on the basis of statistica…Read more
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83Systematicity via MonadicityCroatian Journal of Philosophy 7 (3): 343-374. 2007.Words indicate concepts, which have various adicities. But words do not, in general, inherit the adicities of the indicated concepts. Lots of evidence suggests that when a concept is lexicalized, it is linked to an analytically related monadic concept that can be conjoined with others. For example, the dyadic concept CHASE(_,_) might be linked to CHASE(_), a concept that applies to certain events. Drawing on a wide range of extant work, and familiar facts, I argue that the (open class) lexical i…Read more
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95Believing in languagePhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 338-373. 1996.We propose that the generalizations of linguistic theory serve to ascribe beliefs to humans. Ordinary speakers would explicitly (and sincerely) deny having these rather esoteric beliefs about language--e.g., the belief that an anaphor must be bound in its governing category. Such ascriptions can also seem problematic in light of certain theoretical considerations having to do with concept possession, revisability, and so on. Nonetheless, we argue that ordinary speakers believe the propositions e…Read more
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32.1 patterns of reason and traditional grammarIn Barry C. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 822. 2006.
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184Innate ideasIn James A. McGilvray (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky, Cambridge University Press. pp. 164--181. 2005.Here's one way this chapter could go. After defining the terms 'innate' and 'idea', we say whether Chomsky thinks any ideas are innate -- and if so, which ones. Unfortunately, we don't have any theoretically interesting definitions to offer; and, so far as we know, Chomsky has never said that any ideas are innate. Since saying that would make for a very short chapter, we propose to do something else. Our aim is to locate Chomsky, as he locates himself, in a rationalist tradition where talk of in…Read more
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81Events and semantic architectureOxford University Press. 2005.A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.
New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Language |
Cognitive Sciences |
Areas of Interest
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |