| Description: |
This course will address some fundamental issues of normal human linguistic abilities. We will pay special attention to the question ³When we learn a language, what do we learn and how do we learn it?² This sort of study provides a powerful basis from which various broad philosophical issues can be addressed. These issues include: the nature and assessment of the rationalism/empiricism debate, issues about cognitive architecture (especially connectionism vs. classicism), and the general nature of cognitive activity.
Conceptually, the course has three components. The first component covers some logical principles designed to help distinguish the classes of languages that are learnable from those that are not. The second component covers some empirical issues about the nature of human languages and language acquisition. The third component covers some foundational views in the philosophies of mind and language. The previous two components will enable us to carefully consider -- and in some cases, rigorously assess -- these views. In the other direction, a sharpened understanding of some of these views will allow us to better understand and evaluate the logical and empirical data mentioned above.
Expected readings will include papers by Noam Chomsky, Donald Davidson, Martin Davies, Mary Francis Egan, Jeffrey Elman, Gareth Evans, Jerry Fodor, Edward Gibson, E. Mark Gold, Gary Marcus, Paul Pietroski, Steven Pinker, W. V. Quine, Karin Stromswold, Ken Wexler and others.
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