Abstract
In view of the fact that we intend to understand the structure of (linguistic) cognition and also that the relation to the underlying biological infrastructure is not an intermediate link, language seems to be the most optimal bridge that can take us inside the arena of cognition. With this goal, this chapter advances the idea the linguistic structures are themselves cognitive structures (in a linguistic garb) and demonstrates this by taking into account a number of interesting and yet intricate linguistic phenomena revealing the logical texture of linguistic cognition. Thus, a number of cases of linguistic phenomena such as variable binding, quantification, complex predicates, and word order that are logically intricate and defy a unifying linguistic explanation are examined in detail. Many of the principles underpinning the cognitive constitution of linguistic structures may also be taken to be the ‘laws’ of our underlying cognitive organization.
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Notes
- 1.
Thus, for example, if we have the sentence ‘Raj loves what he needs’ where on one interpretation ‘he’ is bound by ‘Raj’, the logical analysis will be this: Raj [⋋x [x loves what x needs]]. It may be observed that the same lambda operator scopes over or controls the variable x which stands for the binder on the one hand and ‘he’ on the other.
- 2.
Even if the content-filler is present in some prior linguistic construction, that is, linguistically present in the discourse, it has to be (re)encoded in a linguistic format for the new linguistic context in which the variable in question is present.
- 3.
Many people do not consider ‘only’ to be a standard quantifier because it can be used before a whole (quantificational) noun phrase itself as in ‘only the president’, ‘only three soldiers’, ‘only Meera’ or even in ‘for students only’. If ‘only’ can precede a quantifier itself in a (quantificational) noun phrase, this indicates that ‘only’ is not located in the position of quantifiers in (quantificational) noun phrases. This is not possible for standard quantifiers such as ‘every’, ‘a/some’, ‘most’ etc. (see also von Fintel 1997). Besides, ‘only’ can also be used adverbially as in ‘He only pushed the bar’, and as an adjective in examples like ‘the only man’, ‘my only book’.
- 4.
This, of course, depends on the measure of |RC| which is, in the present case, the cardinality of the set of those individuals who do not die on the war front (see (94)). The value of this may vary depending on the context. For instance, if the value of |RC| is 10,000, then the calculation of the values taken from this example in terms of the equation of (94) will produce the desired inequality. However, if, for example, the value of |RC| is 6000, the desired inequality will not obtain. In other words, in this case 100 soldiers dying on the war front will not count as ‘many soldiers’.
- 5.
This is so because one of the fundamental axioms of set theory is that a set is a subset of itself. Hence any set as a whole is a subset of itself.
- 6.
The underlying assumption here is that the basic word order in Bengali is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), and hence, if the object appears at the beginning of the sentence rather than before the verb, the assumption is that the object has been fronted. Likewise, we say the verb has been fronted and so on. Note that if there is no basic word order present in a language, the concept of fronting does not even make sense (see Mithun 1992).
- 7.
That is the reason why in the Hungarian examples (115a–c) the material minus the item fronted is within braces.
- 8.
It may be noted that the notion of a bound assumes a different level of significance, especially when the number of items is small enough. If this number is just two, for instance, the difference between sequencing and indexing is virtually inessential as they can be tracked either by their sequential positions or by their indices in more or less similar ways. Here, it does not make much of a difference since the permutation possibilities and the number of items are the same (that is, 2), regardless of whether sequencing or indexing is deployed. A greater number of items creates a great deal of burden on the memory and indexing can facilitate tracking many items within the space of a greater number of permutation possibilities which increase with the increasing number of items to be tracked. But sequencing, on the other hand, can be cumbersome for the memory if more than one sequence may be valid or licit for a given range of items whose number is greater than two.
- 9.
This particular aspect becomes more prominent in question formation requiring the permutation of the word that is questioned. The example below from Warlpiri is illustrative here.
Verse
Verse nyarrpa Japanangka wangka-ja [pirrarni-rli kuja nyiya luwa-rnu]? how Japanangka say-PAST [yesterday-ERG COMPL what shoot-PAST ‘What did Japanangka say he shot yesterday?’
(Hale 1994: 204)Here the object of the verb ‘luwa’ (meaning ‘shoot’) is questioned but it does not undergo a permutation for question formation; instead, a proxy question word—that is, the word ‘nyarrpa’—is placed at the beginning of the sentence to form the appropriate question.
- 10.
- 11.
One scenario where displacement operations can be transparent to the surface structure is the case of raising. The following shows this clearly.
Sentence (S): The professor seems to be smart.
Pre-Derivational Representation: [S seems [[the professor] to be smart]]
Post-Derivational Representation: [S [the professor] seems [ __ to be smart]]
The symbol ‘_’ above indicates the place from where the noun phrase ‘the professor’ has been shifted. This structural displacement has taken place because the noun phrase ‘the professor’ does not get case within the infinitival clause ‘to be smart’ (which is tenseless) and hence moves to the front in order to receive case. The point to be highlighted is that the string ‘The professor seems to be smart’ matches the structural representation at the post-derivational stage, while it differs from the structure at the pre-derivational stage.
- 12.
Here the clause ‘why he did it’ can be said to originate in the argument position of ‘understand’, as it is in (123a), and since the subject position of the entire sentence is empty, a dummy subject (which is ‘it’) is inserted in the front position. But then, the entire clause ‘why he did it’ can itself play the role of the subject of the whole sentence and may then move to the front position to serve as the subject. This is what we see in (123b).
- 13.
Some sentences are known to be grammatically well-formed and yet introduce processing difficulties. The following sentence first discussed by Bever (1970) is a paradigm example of this.
‘The horse raced past the barn fell’.
This sentence introduces the difficulty when the reader/listener is sort of ‘led down the garden path’ in interpreting ‘raced’ as the matrix verb of the main subject ‘the horse’, when in fact the actual matrix verb is ‘fell’ which is related to ‘the horse’ but this relation is interrupted by the reduced relative clause ‘raced past the barn’. That is, the sentence becomes clearer if we insert ‘that was’ between ‘horse’ and ‘raced’, thereby changing it to ‘The horse that was raced past the barn fell’. Hence the name ‘garden path’ is attached to such constructions.
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Mondal, P. (2020). Linguistic Structures as Cognitive Structures. In: Language, Biology and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23715-8_4
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