Thanks to the support of the European Science Foundation and the Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS, Lyon, here are the abstracts of a number of recent papers that should be of interest to all (?) and, especially, to the Forum's rather silent palaeolinguists.
Word learning without Theory of Mind. Possible, but useless.
Gil Diesendruck
A number of psychological mechanisms have been suggested to account for children's word learning. In the present paper, I will argue that while some of these mechanisms might account for word learning in special cases, an understanding of minds is what de facto guides normally developing children’s word learning. I will review evidence showing that children rely on cues about speakers’ intents, rather than cues pertinent to the other mechanisms, not only for establishing the referents of words, but also for interpreting their meanings. Possible implications for the evolution of these capacities will then be discussed.
Date of publication: 7 June 2004
On concepts and language.
Véronique Boulenger and Tatiana Nazir
One of the central issues in ToM concerns the role of concepts such as belief and knowledge. The goal of the paper is to take a closer look the relation between concepts and language. Today, the claim that evolutionary pressures have resulted in specialized neural circuits dedicated to processing different categories such as ‘animals’, ‘fruit/vegetables’, and ‘tools’ goes almost with no further notice. As even “old world monkeys” such as Baboons can use analogical reasoning to match symbol arrays, the speculated neural circuits in humans may then have evolved prior to language. Yet, in human infants there are clear links between word learning and conceptual organization. We will review category specific semantic deficits as observed in brain damaged patients together with findings in functional neuroimaging to assess whether these results can provide hints as to the evolution of human language.
Date of publication: 18 June 2004
The Mirror System Hypothesis. Integrating a Theory of Language Evolution with a Critical Look at Theory of Mind.
Michael Arbib
I will (1) summarize the mirror system hypothesis that the mirror system for grasping served as the evolutionary base for the human capacity for imitation and language; (2) offer a critique of the concept of theory of mind; and (3) assess hypotheses on the relation of the mirror system to agency and empathy. The exact content of the paper will be influenced heavily by earlier material posted to our virtual conference
Date of publication: 2 July 2004
Theory of mind and language ability. Understanding the bigger picture.
Ted Ruffman
It is well established that children's 'theory of mind' correlates with their language ability. However, the majority of correlations have been obtained with verbal questions on false belief tasks as the sole or a prominent measure of theory of mind. Given that these theory of mind tasks are highly linguistic by their very nature, the correlations with language are not terribly surprising. Important questions are whether language ability correlates with something more fundamental in children's theory of mind. How could an incremental increase in language ability result in an apparently more fundamental shift in understanding belief? These and other questions are addressed in this paper.
Date of publication: 24 May 2004
Why language first?
Jill De Villiers
For some philosophers, thinking is necessarily propositional and symbolic even in animals and infants, and logically prior to natural language but equally complex in its capacity for representing meanings. If so, a nonverbal creature could make inferences over such representations for predicting how others act. Alternatively, not only are propositional attitudes the appropriate way to describe our internal representations, but these are scaffolded in human development by having language of the appropriate degree of complexity. On this view, an individual with less language would not be able to formulate the appropriate representation of another person holding a false belief, and hence have no basis for reasoning about their actions. But how could that individual gain the necessary linguistic structure without acquiring first the conceptual underpinnings of false beliefs? The possible solution I provide for ontogenesis might be plausible for the species too.
Date of publication: 10 May 2004
Imitation, Quoting and Theory of Mind.
Tecumseh Fitch
Despite ongoing debate concerning the presence of theory of mind capabilities in nonhuman primates, it is clear that 1) human theory of mind capacities are very highly developed, and 2) these capacities are a crucial component underlying pragmatically well-formed communication. Human language clearly benefits from these enhanced theory of mind capacities. I suggest that language (and in particular the capacity for vocal imitation) symmetrically aids theory of mind capacities by providing a "scaffolding" for the representation of others' minds, via quoting. By providing a relatively durable sensorimotor representation of another individual's actions, quoting allows off-line processing of their thoughts and intentions.
Date of publication: 26 April 2004
A Pragmatic Perspective on the Evolution of Langage and Languages.
Gloria Origgi and Dan Sperber
Language is both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. Our aim here is to discuss, in an evolutionary perspective, the articulation of these two aspects of language. For this, we draw on a pragmatic view of language development and language evolution
Date of publication: 12 April 2004
Do sex differences in empathy account for sex differences in language acquisition?
Simon Baron-Cohen
A new model of sex differences in the mind suggests that females, on average, show a stronger drive to empathize. Empathy is broader than 'theory of mind' because it not only involves identifying the mental states of the other person, but also responding to these with an appropriate emotion. In this paper, I discuss how the well-established finding that girls develop language earlier than boys might be a consequence of their better empathy. The argument hinges on the notion that picking up word meanings is facilitated if one can identify a speaker's intentions.
Date of publication: 29 March 2004
Cognitive and Functional Factors in the Evolution of Grammar.
Frederick J. Newmeyer
Both cognitive and functional factors have played important roles in the evolution of grammar. Human language originated with the linking of conceptual structures and the vocal output system. With the passage of time, the needs of communication came to play an ever-more important role in grammar. Human language today hence reflects the influence of both types of factors.
Date of publication: 15 March 2004
Constructions underlying theory of mind and language.
Peter Ford F. Dominey
Together, language and theory of mind are distinguished by their recursive compositional nature, posing the difficult question of how such a recursive representation capability could have evolved. The current article provides the outline for the evolution of a mechanism that allows representation of social events, via their mapping onto intentional schema representations in a progression from holistic to increasingly abstract and compositional mappings. This progression is analogous to one that has previously been described for grammatical constructions in language. The implied shared use of this structure mapping capability for language and ToM will be developed.
Date of publication: 1 March 2004
Evolution of Language from Theory of Mind or Coevolution of Language and Theory of Mind?
Anne Reboul
Though some contemporary theories of language evolution see it as taking as its foundation the pre-evolution of theory of mind, acquisition data seem to show that the ability to pass the false belief test does not appear much before four years of age. What is more, some recent studies claim that this ability is crucially linked to the acquisition of some linguistic structures and/or concepts. This seems to suggest that theory of mind might not be monolithic and that a full theory of mind needs language to develop. Thus a coevolution scenario might be preferable to a sequential one in which theory of mind evolution would preceed language evolution.
Date of publication: 13 February 2004
For access to the actual papers (and comments), as well as additional information, click
CLICK HERE.Jacques Cinq-Mars
PS. Unfortunately (unless I am mistaken), PDF versions of the papers do not seem to be available.
