Linguistics

Contains research objectives and summary of research on one research project.National Institute of Mental Health (Grant 3 P01 MH13390-08S1)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 TOl HD00111-10)National Institute of Mental Health (Grant HD 05168-01, 02, 03)M.I.T. Sloan Fund for Basic ResearchGrant Foundatio

Linguistics

Contains research objectives and reports on two research project.National Institute of Mental Health (Grant 5 P01 MH-13390-04

Linguistics

Contains research objectives and reports on five research projects.National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 P01 MH-13390-02

Conceptual dependency as the language of thought

Roger Schank's research in AI takes seriously the ideas that understanding natural language involves mapping its expressions into an internal representation scheme and that these internal representations have a syntax appropriate for computational operations. It therefore falls within the computational approach to the study of mind. This paper discusses certain aspects of Schank's approach in order to assess its potential adequacy as a (partial) model of cognition. This version of the Language of Thought hypothesis encounters some of the same difficulties that arise for Fodor's account.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43836/1/11229_2004_Article_BF00413665.pd

Word meaning and lexical pragmatics

In spite of their differences, Two-level Conceptual Semantics, Generative Lexicon Theory and Relevance Theory also have similarities with respect to treatment of the relation of word meanings and contexts. Therefore, the three theories can be considered as complementing each other in analysing word meanings in utterances. In the present paper I will outline a conception of lexical pragmatics which critically amalgamates the views of these theories and has more explanatory power than each theory does separately. Such a lexical pragmatic conception accepts lexical-semantic representations which can be radically underspecified and allow for other methods of meaning description than componential analysis. As words have underspecified meaning representations, they reach their full meanings in corresponding contexts (immediate or extended) through considerable pragmatic inference. The Cognitive Principle of Relevance regulates the way in which the utterance meaning is construed