On the rationality of Case

Case marking has long resisted rationalization in terms of language-external systems of cognition, representing a classical illustration in the generative tradition for an apparently purely 'formal' or 'syntactic' aspect of grammatical organization. I argue that this impasse derives from the prevailing absence of a notion of grammatical meaning, i.e. meaning unavailable lexically or in non-linguistic cognition and uniquely dependent on grammatical forms of organization. In particular, propositional forms of reference, contrary to their widespread designation as 'semantic', are arguably not only grammar-dependent but depend on relations designated as structural 'Cases'. I further argue that these fail to reduce to thematic structure, Person, Tense, or Agreement. Therefore, Case receives a rationalization in terms of how lexical memory is made referential and propositional in language. Structural Case is 'uninterpretable' (bereft of content) only if a non-grammatical notion of meaning is employed, and sapiens-specific cognition is (implausibly) regarded as unmediated by language

What Is Un-Cartesian Linguistics?

Un-Cartesian linguistics is a research program with the aim of rethinking the nature of grammar as a domain of scientific inquiry, raising new questions about the constitutive role of grammar in the organization of our (rational) minds and selves. It reformulates the ‘Cartesian’ foundations of the modern Universal Grammar project, shifting emphasis away from the study of a domain-specific ‘innate’ module separate from thought, to the study of a sapiens-specific mode of cognition conditioned by both grammatical and lexical organization, and thus a particular cognitive phenotype, which is uniquely also a linguistic one. The purpose of this position paper is to introduce and motivate this new concept in its various dimensions and in accessible terms, and to define the ‘Un-Cartesian Hypothesis’: that the grammaticalization of the hominin brain in the evolutionary transition to our species uniquely explains why our cognitive mode involves a capacity for thought in a propositional format

Linguistic Evidence Against Predicativism

The view that proper names are uniformly predicates (‘predicativism’) has recently gained prominence. I review linguistic evidence against it. Overall, the (cross-) linguistic evidence suggests that proper names function as predicates when they appear in a grammatically predicative position and as referential expressions when they are grammatically in a referential position. Conceptual grounds on which the predicativist view might nonetheless be upheld include ‘uniformity’, i.e., that a single semantic value be lexically specified for names in all of their occurrences irrespective of differences in their grammar. However, ‘being a predicate’ or ‘being referential’ are not lexical properties of words but indications for how these grammatically function on an occasion of their use. Moreover, the intuitively referential and intuitively predicative uses of proper names precisely covary with grammatical differences. A proper name is therefore a predicate when it is predicatively used, not when its grammar and meaning are different. Given this grammar-meaning alignment there is no motivation to posit a novel ‘covert syntax’ for names in their referential uses, which breaks this alignment. Cross-linguistic evidence from languages such as Catalan, which features overt determiners in referential uses of proper names, moreover turns out to strongly support the view that the grammar of human language is systematically sensitive to differences in the referential and predicative uses of name

Recursion as a Human Universal and as a Primitive

This contribution asks, in an empirical rather than formal perspective, whether a range of descriptive phenomena in grammar usually characterized in terms of ‘recursion’ actually exhibit recursion. It is concluded that empirical evidence does not support this customary assumption. Language, while formally recursive, need not be recursive in the underlying generative mechanisms of its grammar. Hence, while recursion may well be one of the hallmarks of human nature, grammar may not be the cognitive domain where it is found. Arguments for this claim are briefly exposed and then discussed with respect to a selection of talks from the DGfS workshop on Foundations of Language Comparison: Human Universals as Constraints on Language Diversity that led to this special issue

The linguistics of schizophrenia: thought disturbance as language pathology across symptoms

We hypothesize that linguistic (dis-) organization in the schizophrenic brain plays a much more central role in the pathogenesis of this disease than commonly supposed. Against the standard view, that schizophrenia is a disturbance of thought or selfhood, we argue that the origins of the relevant forms of thought and selfhood at least partially depend on language. The view that they do not is premised by a theoretical conception of language that we here identify as 'Cartesian' and contrast with a recent 'un-Cartesian' model. This linguistic model empirically argues for both (i) a one-to-one correlation between human-specific thought or meaning and forms of grammatical organization, and (ii) an integrative and co-dependent view of linguistic cognition and its sensory-motor dimensions. Core dimensions of meaning mediated by grammar on this model specifically concern forms of referential and propositional meaning. A breakdown of these is virtually definitional of core symptoms. Within this model the three main positive symptoms of schizophrenia fall into place as failures in language-mediated forms of meaning, manifest either as a disorder of speech perception (Auditory Verbal Hallucinations, AVHs), abnormal speech production running without feedback control (Formal Thought Disorder, FTD), or production of abnormal linguistic content (Delusions). Our hypothesis makes testable predictions for the language profile of schizophrenia across symptoms; it simplifies the cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia while not being inconsistent with a pattern of neurocognitive deficits and their correlations with symptoms; and it predicts persistent findings on disturbances of language-related circuitry in the schizophrenic brain

The language profile of formal thought disorder

Formal thought disorder (FTD) is clinically manifested as disorganized speech, but there have been only few investigations of its linguistic properties. We examined how disturbance of thought may relate to the referential function of language as expressed in the use of noun phrases (NPs) and the complexity of sentence structures. We used a comic strip description task to elicit language samples from 30 participants with schizophrenia (SZ), 15 with moderate or severe FTD (SZ + FTD), and 15 minimal or no FTD (SZ−FTD), as well as 15 first-degree relatives of people with SZ (FDRs) and 15 neurotypical controls (NC). We predicted that anomalies in the normal referential use of NPs, sub-divided into definite and indefinite NPs, would identify FTD; and also that FTD would also be linked to reduced linguistic complexity as specifically measured by the number of embedded clauses and of grammatical dependents. Participants with SZ + FTD produced more referential anomalies than NC and produced the fewest definite NPs, while FDRs produced the most and thus also differed from NC. When referential anomalies were classed according to the NP type in which they occurred, the SZ + FTD group produced more anomalies in definite NPs than NC. Syntactic errors did not distinguish groups, but the SZ + FTD group exhibited significantly less syntactic complexity than non-SZ groups. Exploratory regression analyses suggested that production of definite NPs distinguished the two SZ groups. These results demonstrate that FTD can be identified in specific grammatical patterns which provide new targets for detection, intervention, and neurobiological studies

Atypical cortical hierarchy in Aβ-positive older adults and its reflection in spontaneous speech

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).Abnormal deposition of Aβ amyloid is an early neuropathological marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), arising long ahead of clinical symptoms. Non-invasive measures of associated early neurofunctional changes, together with easily accessible behavioral readouts of these changes, could be of great clinical benefit. We pursued this aim by investigating large-scale cortical gradients of functional connectivity with functional MRI, which capture the hierarchical integration of cortical functions, together with acoustic-prosodic features from spontaneous speech, in cognitively unimpaired older adults with and without Aβ positivity (total N = 188). We predicted distortions of the cortical hierarchy associated with prosodic changes in the Aβ + group. Results confirmed substantially altered cortical hierarchies and less variability in these in the Aβ + group, together with an increase in quantitative prosodic measures, which correlated with gradient variability as well as digit span test scores. Overall, these findings confirm that long before the clinical stage and objective cognitive impairment, increased risk of cognitive decline as indexed by Aβ accumulation is marked by neurofunctional changes in the cortical hierarchy, which are related to automatically extractable speech patterns and alterations in working memory functions.This research was supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC202108390062 to RH), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (grant PID2019-105241 GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 to WH), and partially by French Investissements d’Avenir - Labex EFL program (ANR-10- LABX-0083 to the IdEx Université Paris Cité - ANR-18-IDEX-0001, to JAT).Peer reviewe

Natural Language Processing Markers for Psychosis and Other Psychiatric Disorders: Emerging Themes and Research Agenda From a Cross-Linguistic Workshop

This workshop summary on natural language processing (NLP) markers for psychosis and other psychiatric disorders presents some of the clinical and research issues that NLP markers might address and some of the activities needed to move in that direction. We propose that the optimal development of NLP markers would occur in the context of research efforts to map out the underlying mechanisms of psychosis and other disorders. In this workshop, we identified some of the challenges to be addressed in developing and implementing NLP markers-based Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) in psychiatric practice, especially with respect to psychosis. Of note, a CDSS is meant to enhance decision-making by clinicians by providing additional relevant information primarily through software (although CDSSs are not without risks). In psychiatry, a field that relies on subjective clinical ratings that condense rich temporal behavioral information, the inclusion of computational quantitative NLP markers can plausibly lead to operationalized decision models in place of idiosyncratic ones, although ethical issues must always be paramount

Is our mental grammar just a set of constructions?

According to this book, ‘each of us carries around in our heads a “mental grammar” far more impressive than any written grammar’ (6); this grammar is made up of ‘abstract rules’ that can generate a ‘seemingly infinite number of novel sentences’ (12)

Reference across pathologies: a new linguistic lens on disorders of thought

According to a linguistic tradition here termed ‘Cartesian’, language is relegated to an expressive system considered to provide the means to encode or communicate an independently constituted thought process. An alternative vision here termed ‘un-Cartesian’ regards language as an organizational principle of human-specific thought, with the implication that thought of the same type would not become available to a cognitive system without language and that clinical thought disturbances implicate language dysfunction. I here explore the latter view in the context of intra-species variation of the human cognitive type: cognitive disorders that, as in the case of autism and schizophrenia, come with language-related clinical symptoms. If language is the configurator of humanspecific thought, cognitive and linguistic phenotypes should illuminate one another. I specifically review evidence for impairment in one universal linguistic function, namely reference. Linguistic meaning is referential meaning: we cannot utter sentences without referring to persons, objects, and events, based on lexicalized concepts that provide descriptions of these referents. Reference in this sense takes a number of human-specific forms, from generic to specific, deictic and personal ones, which empirically co-vary with forms of grammatical organization. As reference in some of these forms proves to be highly vulnerable across major mental disorders, grammar is thereby linked to forms of thought and selfhood critical to normal cognitive functioning. In this way clinical linguistic and cognitive diversity provides an important new window into the foundational question of the thought-language relationship and the cognitive significance of grammar.Research leading to this paper has been supported by the grants ‘Language and Mental Health’, AH/L004070/1, and ‘Un-Cartesian linguistics’, AH/H50009X/1 awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and the grant ‘Language, Deixis, and the Disordered Mind’ (FFI2013-40526-P) awarded by the Ministerio de economia y competitividad, Madrid