The Norwegian Summer Institute on Language and Mind

Transcription

1 The Norwegian Summer Institute on Language and Mind A summer course in linguistics and philosophy in Norway. Year one, 2016, at CSMN at the University of Oslo Monday 20th June Wednesday 29th June, 2016 Seminar room 652, GM hus, at Oslo University, Blindern campus Lecturers Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt University, Berlin) Nicholas Allott (University of Oslo) John Collins (University of East Anglia) Frances Egan (Rutgers University) Carsten Hansen (University of Oslo) Andrew Knoll (lecturer/teaching assistant) (University of Maryland at College Park) Jeff Lidz (University of Maryland at College Park) Terje Lohndal (NTNU, Trondheim, & UiT The Arctic University of Norway) Paul Pietroski (University of Maryland at College Park) Georges Rey (University of Maryland at College Park) Neil Smith (University College London) Organisers Senior lecturer Nicholas Allott, ILOS, University of Oslo Professor Carsten Hansen, University of Oslo Professor Terje Lohndal, NTNU & UiT The Arctic University of Norway Professor Georges Rey, University of Maryland at College Park Supporting institutions CSMN, University of Oslo; Norwegian Graduate Researcher School in Linguistics and Philology; IFIKK, University of Oslo; University of Maryland at College Park Description of the summer institute The primary aim of the institute is to bring graduate students (MA-level and doctoral researchers) up to date with developments in the intersection of work on language and mind by presenting classes with leading researchers in the relevant fields. These will include linguists open to philosophical issues, and philosophers focused on linguistics and the cognitive sciences. Theme for the institute in its first year, 2016: representation in language and mind Representations and their role in computation have been a central assumption and preoccupation in modern linguistics and the cognitive sciences since the cognitive revolution of the - 1 -

2 early 1960s. Many live research problems hinge on representations: both the specifics in each area (syntax, semantics, vision etc.) what is represented?; are there multiple levels of representation?; what constraints apply at which levels? and more general questions what is a representation?; what claim do we make when we say that something is represented in the mind?; what kinds of evidence bear on such claims? This year s institute will try to bring together the often disparate discussions of the specific and general issues. The teaching Classes are on weekdays: Monday Friday and then Monday Wednesday. There are four strands of classes. Every day of the course there will be classes in three strands, each for 2 hours: one class in the morning and two in the afternoon. The classes will be consecutive, with no parallel sessions. That way, if you want to you can go to everything. The teaching will be discursive. We expect that each class will comprise a one-hour lecture and discussion for one hour. How to get the required reading Where the papers are freely available online, we have linked to them on the summer institute website (lecture page). All registered students have been sent a link to a folder online which holds the other required reading for the course. Credits for doctoral students We will be giving 5 ECTS credits if the following requirements are fulfilled: Do readings before and during the course as assigned by the instructors Attend at least 3 out of 4 lecture strands Ask a total of 3 questions in class across the 3 lecture strands and submit these questions in writing to us at the end of the course. It is possible to increase this to 10 ECTS by submitting an essay

3 Syntax Lectures Lecturers: Artemis Alexiadou (Berlin), John Collins (East Anglia) and Terje Lohndal (Trondheim) Topic: Linguistic representations and the architecture of Minimalism. Issues that may be discussed include: FLN vs. FLB; interfaces; phases; the end of endocentricity; Chomsky s claim that the FLN is simply recursive merge; distortions due to the demands of the interfaces, particularly linearization and displacement for PF. Lecture 1 (TL) What is syntax (constituents etc. very briefly)? An intro to generative syntax, large architectural issues such as innateness, I-language representations, descriptive vs explanatory adequacy Required reading: Adger, David Syntax. WIREs Cogn Sci 6: Lecture 2 (TL) Basics of GB and the move to Minimalism Required reading: Lasnik, Howard & Terje Lohndal Government-binding/principles and parameters theory. WIREs Cogn Sci 1: Recommended reading: Hornstein, Norbert Three grades of Grammatical Involvement: Syntax from a Minimalist Perspective. Mind & Language 28: Lecture 3 (AA) Basics of Minimalism, FLN vs. FLB, focus on interfaces for linearization, PF displacement Required reading: Hauser, Marc D., Noam Chomsky & Tecumseh Fitch The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298: Recommended reading: Adger, David Core Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Chapter 3] Lecture 4 (AA) Features and their role in syntax Required reading: Adger, David & Peter Svenonius Features in Minimalist Syntax. In Cedric Boeckx (ed.), The Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Recommended readings: Ramchand, Gillian & Peter Svenonius Deriving the functional hierarchy. Language Sciences 46: Shlonsky, Ur The Cartographic Enterprise in Syntax. Language and Linguistics Compass 4:

4 Lecture 5 (JC) The role of virtual conceptual necessity (VCN) in the minimalist program. Phrase structure and movement reduced to merge. Required reading: Chomsky, Noam Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels, & J. Uriagereka (eds.), Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Recommended readings: Chomsky, Noam Beyond Explanatory Adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chomsky, Noam Three Factors in Language Design. Linguistic Inquiry 36: Lecture 6 (JC) How many kinds of merge are there and can they be justified by VCN? Does set theory give content to VCN? Required reading: Collins, John The Unity of Linguistic Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Chapter 5] Recommended readings: Cecchetto, Carols & Caterina Donati (Re)Labelling. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 2] Fukui, Naoki Merge and bare phrase structure. In Cedric Boeckx (ed.), The Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press

5 Representations in mental systems Lecturers: John Collins (East Anglia), Frances Egan (Rutgers), Carsten Hansen (Oslo), Andrew Knoll (Maryland) and Georges Rey (Maryland) Topics: intentional vs. algebraic readings of cognitive systems including linguistics, vision, and navigation. Lectures 1 & 6 (FE): Mental Representation in Cognitive Science The first lecture will consider the nature and function of intentional interpretation in computational accounts of cognitive capacities. The second lecture will discuss whether a realist stance toward mental representation is appropriate in light of various challenges by (among others) dynamicists, enactivists, and fictionalists. Required reading: For lecture 1: Egan, How to think about mental content For lecture 6: William Ramsey, Representation Reconsidered (sections 6.1 & 6.2) Recommended readings: For lecture 1: Egan, "Function-theoretic explanation and the search for neural mechanisms" For lecture 6: Mark Sprevak, Fictionalism about neural representations Lecture 2 (AK): What Do the Representations Explain? When are representations with intentional content (representations that are about things) useful for explanation and when are they not? Explaining processes like phonological perception and honeybee navigation requires generalizing over indefinite disjunctions of possible inputs. Representations help make such generalizations. On the other hand, we can explain processes like desert ant navigation with generalizations over a limited set of proximal stimuli. Representations are not useful for these explanations, or so I'll argue. Required reading: Knoll, A. & Rey, G. (forthcoming ms.) Arthropod Intentionality? Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds Recommended readings: Wehner, R. (2009). The architecture of the desert ant's navigational toolkit. Myrmecological News, 12, Holt, L.L. & Lotto, A.J. (2010) Speech Perception as Categorization. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. 72(5): doi: /app Lectures 3 & 5 (CH): Burge and the Bees, Gallistel and the Ants Lecture 3: The first lecture sets out what is arguably the basic notion of representation employed in vision science, and perceptual psychology more generally. Though the notion is non- intentional, this is not to say that perceptual states aren t intentional. What it means is rather that, if this is the only notion of representation that the science relies on, the relevant computational explanations don t speak to the question. Required reading: (i) an excerpt of chapter 1 of D. Marr, Vision

6 (ii) an excerpt of chapter 4, Representations, Gallistel and King, Memory and the Computational Brain. Lecture 5: Tyler Burge has recently, and in great detail, argued that this is quite wrong. According to him, perceptual psychology relies essentially on an intentional notion of representation. In his view, this can be established beyond reasonable doubt if one looks at explanations of perceptual constancies. (To all intents and purposes he overlooks the concept of representation set out in the first lecture.) The second lecture looks briefly at the key phenomenon of perceptual constancies, and some sample explanations of them. The principal aim of the lecture will be to show that such explanations don t - pace Burge - invoke or presuppose intentionality. (Along the way, I hope to comment, at least briefly, on the key argument in the Knoll and Rey paper Arthropod Intentionality (see Knoll lecture). Required reading: an excerpt from T. Burge, Origins of Objectivity Lecture 4 (GR): Need of intentional inexistents in ling theory What exactly are the "things" linguists are all the time discussing nouns, verbs, NPs, CPs, tree structures of these things: most deny they are external acoustic phenomena, but are psychologically real. But what does that mean? That they are in the mind? Or perhaps only represented there. But a representation of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. So what happened to, e.g., the NP? Required reading: Rey (ms.), Chomsky & Philosophy: Insights and Excess, chap 1.3 Plus various Chomsky passages quoted in the above, e.g.: with Halle, (1968), Sound Pattern of English, pp24-5 (1975) Précis of Rules and Representations and Reply to Matthews, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 1-61 (2000) New Horizons in the Study of Language, chaps 2,5-6, especially & additionally: pp , 21 4, 105, 125, 129, 150, , , 181, Recommended reading: John Collins (2014), Representations without representa: content and illusion in linguistic theory, In P. Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Semantics & Beyond (pp ). Berlin: de Gruyter. (N.B., same as required in Collins lecture immediately below) Lecture 7 (JC): Algebraic/abstract object reading of linguistics Required reading: John Collins (2014), Representations without representa: content and illusion in linguistic theory, In P. Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Semantics & Beyond (pp ). Berlin: de Gruyter (same as recommended for Rey lecture immediately above) Recommended reading: John Collins (2007), Meta-scientific eliminativism: a reconsideration of Chomsky's review of Skinner, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 58:

7 Semantics and pragmatics Lecturers: Nicholas Allott (Oslo), Paul Pietroski (Maryland), and Georges Rey (Maryland) Topics: How does the representation of word meaning in the linguistic system relate to the representation of thoughts? The notion of I-analyticity. What representations are required to understand an utterance? Lecture 1 (NEA): Levels of representation in pragmatics Required reading: Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2005). Pragmatics. In F. Jackson & M. Smith (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. (pp ). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lecture 2 (PP): Semantic internalism Required reading: Pietroski, P. (forthcoming). Semantic internalism. In J. McGilvray (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky. (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. N.B. the lecture will explain rather than presuppose the techie stuff in the paper! Lecture 3 (PP): Semantic typology Required reading: Pietroski, P. (forthcoming). Semantic typology and composition. In B. Rabern & D. Ball (Eds.), The Science of Meaning. (N.B. the lecture will explain rather than presuppose the techie stuff in the paper!) Introductory background reading (for those who haven't done any logic or model theory, or would like to brush them up): Chapters ; ; of Saeed, J. I. (2003). Semantics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. (Or any edition of this textbook that you can find) Lecture 4 (NEA): Lexical modulation Required reading: Wilson, D. & Carston, R. (2007). A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference and ad hoc concepts. In N. Burton-Roberts (Ed.), Pragmatics. (pp ). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lecture 5 (GR): Analytic synthetic: its history, significance and prospects Not only many philosophers, but most anyone who thinks about how we know math and logic, and maybe that all bachelors are unmarried and all justice involves fairness, is tempted by the thought that such things are true by definition, or analysis of the meanings of the constitutent terms. This turns out to be an extraordinarily difficult (cluster of) idea(s) to sort out, but doing so is essential to anyone, phil er or linguist or whoever thinks about semantics. Quine's views on it/them are the very best on the topic, even if, I hope to show, not quite the last word. Chomsky and Pietroski still have good arias to sing. Required reading: Rey, G. (2003/2013). The analytic/synthetic distinction. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Recommended readings (not obligatory, but starred items are highly recommended): *Fodor, J. A. (1998). Concepts : Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, chapters 3-6 (pp40-119). Oxford: Clarendon Press

8 **Quine, W. V. O. (1956 [1976]), Carnap and logical truth, secs I-VI (pp ), sec X (pp ), in his Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rey, G. (2009). Concepts, defaults and internal asymmetric dependencies: Distillations of Fodor and Horwich. In N. Kompa, C. Nimtz, & C. Suhm (Eds.), The A Priori and its Role in Philosophy: pp Paderborn: Mentis. Rey, G. (forthcoming), Analytic, a priori, False and Maybe Non-Conceptual, European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, special Festschrift for Nenad Miscevic

9 Acquisition, representation and psychological reality Lecturers: Andrew Knoll (Maryland); Jeff Lidz (Maryland), Georges Rey (Maryland) and Neil Smith (University College London) Topics to include: representations in the acquisition of phonology and syntax; representations and metarepresentations Lecture 1 (NVS): Metarepresentation Evidence from a Polyglot Savant I aim to exemplify and explain the unusual combination of talents and disabilities shown by the polyglot savant Christopher. By looking at the flawed ability of one unique individual I hope to get insight into the nature of metalinguistic competence, its relation to meta-representation and the notion interpretive use. The talk will cover: Savants in general, one Savant in particular Christopher, and his Deviations from the neurotypical. Thereafter I will outline the theoretical Background: Modules, Quasi-modules and the Executive; Relevance Theory with its notions of Interpretive Use and Echoic Use. This leads to a discussion of Metarepresentation and the Meta-space, a brief mention of Baddeley s Theory of Memory, and some potential Explanations and Speculations. This paper has nothing to say about acquisition. Required reading: Smith, N.V. (2002). Ch. 3: Putting a Banana in Your Ear, Language, Bananas, and Bonobos: Linguistic Problems, Puzzles, and Polemics. Oxford: Blackwell. Lecture 2 (NVS): Metarepresentation in the Acquisition of Phonology I aim to resolve the issue of whether the acquiring child s deviant pronunciations e.g. [mit] for Smith are mentally represented by the child. A natural Minimalist strategy, for which I have previously argued, is that The child has no system of his own; hence t here are no output representations, no contrast between input and output lexicons, and no dual grammar. (Smith 2010:101). I plan to refute this hypothesis. I will outline the benefits of the minimalist hypothesis and then marshall the arguments against. The evidence will come mainly from children s metarepresentational ability. Despite the fact that standard discussions of metarepresentation of language are restricted to semantics and pragmatics, with not much on syntax and still less on phonology, I argue that children from age 2 onwards manifest a metarepresentational ability which makes the Minimalist stance untenable. Another instance of Huxley s great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. Required reading: Smith, N.V. (2002). Ch.8: Puzzles, Language, Bananas, and Bonobos: Linguistic Problems, Puzzles, and Polemics. Oxford: Blackwell. Lecture 3 (JL): The Poverty of the Stimulus In this lecture, I review the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, placing it in its historical context and reviewing a range of specific cases and potential objections to them. Required reading: Lasnik & Lidz (in press). The argument from the poverty of the stimulus. Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar

10 Lidz (2014) There s No Poverty of the Stimulus? PISH lus-pish.html Lecture 4 (GR): The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition Language acquisition faces not only the much-remarked upon poverty of the stimulus, what Chomsky calls, Plato s problem. It also is presented with what I call Kant's problem : how, with only positive and no explicit negative data, can we learn what can't be said? And all of this is compounded by Quine s Problem, viz. how to determine even what a grammar is without recourse to an internal psychology. These problems pose particular challenges to General Statistical approaches to language acquisition. Required reading: Rey, G. (ms.). Chomsky & Philosophy: Insights and Excess, Ch.1 Lecture 5 (JL): Learning with Universal Grammar In this lecture, I explore two contributions of Universal Grammar to Language Acquisition. First, I show how UG makes it possible for learners to derive knowledge that is richer than what is expressed in the data per se. Second, I show how UG defines the information that learners look for in their experience in shaping their ultimate grammatical competence. Required reading: Lidz & Gagliardi (2015) How Nature Meets Nurture: Universal Grammar and Statistical Learning Lecture 6 (AK): Hypotheses Without Representations Charles Yang has proposed a model of language acquisition in which the learner reassigns weights to competing hypothesized grammars based upon incoming data. The approach is similar to Bayesian models applied throughout cognitive science to domains such as early vision processing and motor control. Meanwhile, many philosophers have supposed that hypotheses are mental states that represent the world being a certain way. The hypothesis that a language employs overt Wh-movement represents that language as having Wh- movement. We ll examine why philosophers have made this seemingly reasonable assumption, but consider reasons to suppose that the hypotheses employed in Yang s model-- and similar models of early vision processing -- are not about anything. Required reading: Yang, C.D. (2002). Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language. Oxford: OUP. Ch.2, A Variational Model of Language Acquisition, ss (pp )