The hypothesis of open compositionality

On the traditional view, natural language is often viewed as a representation system used for communicative purposes. On this general view, a natural language can be viewed as a set of sentence-meaning ordered pairs, together with a set of conventions determining which such set is used by which population (Lewis, 1975). This view usually comes with the understanding that languages are closed under compositionality. However, we know very well from empirical studies on cognitive development, language acquisition and historical linguistics (among others) that natural languages are much more than just a communicative tool. On this other, cognitive view, natural languages are better understood as “a consequence and an enabler of the exercise of higher order cognitive abilities” (Shatz, 2008). This cognitive view of language appears to be incompatible with the idea that languages are closed under compositionality. In this work I want to use both (communicative and cognitive) views of language in order to present an alternative account of the compositional shape of natural languages, what I call “open compositionality”.

Zeit: 19.01.2015, 17-19 Uhr

Ort: SR 09.53, Institut für Philosophie, Heinrichstr. 26/V, 8010 Graz