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Cognition and Process classes summary
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CLASS 1Cognition: a faculty for processing information (of any kind ), applying knowledge
(reasoning), and changing belief states (learning), or preferences (choosing).
According to 2019 Elsevier Current Biology: ability to comprehend, mental act or process of
knowing.
Tim Bayne: The question of whether a particular state or process is cognitive can be
understood in terms of whether it involves representations that are systematically
recombinable and stimulus-independent.
Cecilia Heyes: When we say a process is cognitive, we mean that it handles information in an
adaptive way and can be modelled usefully as a form of computation.
Domains of cognition are:
Attention;
Memory;
Language acquisition;
Interpretation and production;
Reasoning;
Problem-solving;
Decision-making.
Cognitive processes can be:
Natural or artificial.
Lower or higher.
Conscious or unconscious.
Evolution of cognition:
Phylogenetic model of the brain:
1. Neo - cognition
2. Paleo - emotion
3. Archi - arousel/reflexes
Reasoning:
Deduction:
o The beans from this bag are white (regularity)
o These beans are from this bag (fact)
o These beans are white (fact)
Induction:
o These beans are white (fact)
, o These beans are from this bag (fact)
o The beans from this bag are white (conclusion: regularity)
Abduction:
o The beans from this bag are white (regularity)
o These beans are white (fact)
o These beans are from this bag (conclusion: fact)
Examples of (human) cognitive processes:
Feeling a gush of cold air, one infers that the door must be open
Person sees others picking up their luggage at the station, thus the train must be
coming
Frontal lobe slide → niet leren
Cognitive science: the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes.
Disciplines within cognitive science:
Psycholinguistics;
Linguistics.
History of linguistic theories:
First half 20th century: mainly descriptive and prescriptive theory and research on
language as sociocultural phenomenon.
1950/60: Chomsky's first attempt to develop a linguistic theory "should we explain
how we learn language in a limited time, and on the basis of unsystematic input."
o Rule system of grammar is similar to exact sciences. Generative grammar.
1970/80: cognitive linguistics is a gradually growing alternative theory of language
(comprising conceptual systems, human cognition, and meaning construction).
o No autonomous linguistic faculty; grammar is conceptualization; linguistic
knowledge is emergent.
Various approaches develop, in-between positions develop, and camps start to meet
and to discuss.
o Cognitive linguistic theory gets organized and becomes a serious alternative to
generative linguistics.
Generative linguistics:
The language system can (and should) be described apart from its actual use and even
apart from its cognitive processing; that explains the acquisition process - no
psychology.
Language system is unique - especially syntax is autonomous, independent from any
other aspect.
Thus, to study language one needs to 'idealize' the object and abstract from 'wild'
language with its ungrammaticalities, half sentences, interactions with gestures, and
so on.
One should describe the patterns in a formal language.
,Cognitive linguistics:
Language system is a cognitive system that will share its basic architecture with other
cognitive systems; the cognitive language system and the way it operates resembles
other systems.
Linguistic competence is the capacity to extract regularities from the language one is
exposed to, similar to how a child needs to extract regularities from all kinds of input
it is exposed to.
Language is not a static system; it moves and changes through time and it is slightly
different between language users.
Language should be studied while it is used- there is no system above and beyond
language in use.
Two perspectives on language:
1. Linguistics as a product.
1. Which meaning can be said to be ‘encoded’ in the linguistic expression? Or be
implied by this expression? Or be implied in this expression, given a
pragmatic context in which it has been uttered? etc.
2. Psycholinguistics as a product.
1. What happens in the head of a language user when a certain linguistic
expression is presented? Which processes run in which order to result in a
specific representation of meaning? etc.
Representation:
Interpretation is not a 1:1 mapping of a 'linguistic' form on a (mental) world.
o It is a process in which a mental representation is built from the instructions of
the utterance - based on all contextual information and relevant knowledge
and attitudes. However, we can abstract from a context, vary in contexts, and
so on, to learn about what seems to be encoded in the linguistic form as such,
The representation resulting from interpretation cannot be observed immediately - it is
a 'theory' (a model).
Linguistic modeling can be tested in experiments.
The processes leading to the representations and the representations themselves are
meant to be psychologically plausible.
CLASS 2
Generative grammar → Chomsky
Rougly (Taylor, 2003: Cognitive grammar):
GG: linguistic models determine theory of cognition
Cognitive linguistic theory: theory of cognition determines linguistic models (also
called CL)
Jackendoff:
, Goal: J tries to unite advantages of GG with advantages of CL
Means: in order to form an adequate linguistic theory, J takes Chomsky's theory both
as a basis and as an opponent.
1997 Jackendoff:
"We are interested ultimately in the manner in which language ability is embodied in
the human brain."
Chomsky: competence (or: I-language) - not performance (E-language).
To explain:
Humans are capable of constructing sentences they've never heard before.
o Argument for a generative system
Explanation:
Competence must account for that - in the form of a set of combination principles and
rules. These rules must be formalized in order to enable rigorous predictions. Units to
be combined: words (a finite set: a lexicon).
Paradox of language acquisition:
If the set of principles and rules were easy to discover, scientists would have
discovered them by now.
Chomsky: it's not that simple (the system is), because the children have a handicap.
Chomsky's solution: innate UG.
What has to be explained about language, according to J, 2002:
Advantages:
Demonstrates what (at least) has to be explained about language.
Without taking a theoretical stance:
At the hand of one simple's sentence:
o The little star's beside a big star
The primitive elements of the level differ:
Sounds and syllables of phonological structure do not occur on any other level of
grammar - so in fact they are meaningless in themselves.
Clusters of primitive elements do correspond between the levels; a cluster of sounds
may correspond to a syntactic unit (NP or DET) and may have meaning.
Units of syntax (singular, present tense) do not have to correspond to anything
recognizable in phonological structure - they are not pronounceable.
Phonological structure and syntactic = same structure. Semantic has a different
structure.
Elements that are very important on one level, are hardly significant at the other.
Chomsky's assumptions:
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