gleitman and papafragou

Wittgenstein's Perspective
- Quote: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein, 1922/1961)
- Suggests that language shapes the boundaries of human experience and understanding.
Sapir's Contribution
- Quote: "The fact of the matter is that the ‚real world‘ is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group." (Sapir, 1941, as cited in Whorf, 1956, p. 75)
- Proposes that our perception of reality is influenced heavily by our linguistic structures and cultural norms.
Function of Language
- One of the primary functions of language is to facilitate the transfer of ideas between individuals.
- Emphasizes that much of human communication is purposefully aimed at altering the thoughts and attitudes of others.
- Quote: "Much of human communication is an intentional attempt to modify the thoughts and attitudes of others in just this way" (p. 544).
Chomsky's Assertion
- Quote: "Language is a mirror of mind in a deep and significant sense" (Chomsky, 1975, p. 4).
- Suggests that language reflects the complexities of human thought processes.

Whorfian Hypothesis
- Quote: "According to Whorf, the grammatical and lexical resources of individual languages heavily constrain the conceptual representations available to their speakers" (p. 544).
- Highlights how the structure of language can limit or enhance the cognitive processes of its speakers.
Conceptual Growth through Language
- Language serves not just to express pre-existing thoughts but as a vehicle for developing new concepts.
- Quote: "Language here becomes a vehicle for the growth of new concepts… it poses a challenge to the venerable view that one could not acquire a concept that one could not antecedently entertain…" (p. 544).
- Proposes that linguistic experience can potentially lead to the emergence of new thoughts that were not previously conceived.

Comparison of Language and Thought
- Quote: "…, it appears that linguistic representations underdetermine the conceptual contents they are used to convey: Language is sketchy compared to the richness of our thoughts (…)" (p. 547).
- Suggests that there exists a disparity between the brevity of linguistic expressions and the depth of human thought.

Carruthers' Review
- Language as a medium that enables the interaction of representations from various cognitive domains.
- Carruthers (2002) posits that language is essential in the formation of new concepts where different cognitive areas intersect.
- Consideration of modularity in cognitive systems:
- Modules characterized by unique vocabularies and rules of combination.
- Language, being modular, applies restrictions on how these rules can interface with other cognitive domains.
Proposal to Reassess Modularity
- Suggests considering language as a domain-general system, enabling the interaction of representations from domain-specific systems.
- Citation from Spelke and Tsivkin (2001b, p. 84): "Language may serve as a medium for this conjunction because it is a domain-general, combinatorial system…"
- Suggests language's role extends into non-modular and non-domain-specific conceptual thinking, integrating results from modular thinking (Carruthers, 2002, p. 666).

Nativist Program in Linguistics
- The ability to construct and understand phrase structures indicates a significant cognitive capacity.
- This aligns with nativist theories, prominent in early linguistic studies.
- Key figures include Chomsky (1957), Gleitman (1990), Jackendoff (1990), Lidz et al. (2003), Pinker (1984).
- Opposed by views from others like Goldberg (1995) and Tomasello (2000), indicating the contentious nature of the innate versus learned language acquisition debate (p. 560).