Philosophy and Cognitive Science II by Lorenzo Magnani Ping Li & Woosuk Park

Author:Lorenzo Magnani, Ping Li & Woosuk Park
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

If language has been substituted for imitation, we should note that the latter continues to play an important role in our societies at pre-verbal levels (cf. fashion). In addition, imitation certainly plays a primary part in the language learning of a child of 1 to 3 years (pp. 235–236).

I have illustrated in Magnani (2011, Chap. 1), taking advantage of both an evolutionary and a paleoanthropological cognitive perspective, that in human or pre-human groups the appearance of coalitions dominated by a central leader quickly leads to the need for surveillance of surrounding territory to monitor prey and free-riders and watch for enemies who might jeopardize the survival of the coalition.

This is an idea shared by Thom who believes that language becomes a fundamental tool for granting stability and favoring the indispensable manipulation of the world “thus the localization of external facts appeared as an essential part of social communication” (Thom 1988, p. 26), a performance that is already realized by naming26 (the containing relationship) in divalent structures: “X is in Y is a basic form of investment (the localizing pregnance of Y invests X). When X is invested with a ubiquitous biological quality (favorable or hostile), then so is Y” (ibid.). A divalent syntactical structure of language becomes fundamental if a conflict between two outside agents has to be reported. The trivalent syntactical structure subject/verb/object forges a salient “messenger” form that conveys the pregnance between subject and recipient. In sum, the usual abstract functions of syntactic languages, such as conceptualization, appear strictly intertwined with the basic social and especially military nature of communication.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.