Towards a unifying theory of linguistic meaning

ABSTRACT

Fundamental tensions exist between formal-logical approaches and cognitive approaches to linguistic meaning. The divergence arises from the fundamental differences in nature and form between formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning and their cognitive representations. While the former are abstract and logical categories of representations, the latter are ultimately embodied and grounded in sensory-motor systems of the brain. This article aims to motivate a unifying theory/formalism of linguistic meaning from a general biologically integrative perspective in the context of current theorizing in linguistics, neurobiology and cognitive sciences on human language meaning within which two divergent approaches for the mathematical and cognitive aspects of linguistic meaning exist. The tensions can be somewhat neutralized if formal-mathematical structures and cognitive representations of natural language meaning can be shown to have representational duality and unity in brain dynamics. This work shows a broad outline of one, if not the only one, path toward this vision.

KEYWORDS:

• formal-logical structures
• cognitive representations
• linguistic meaning
• brain dynamics
• neurobiology
• unifying theory

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad for all the research support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Competing interests

The author declares no known competing interests.

Notes

[1] It needs to be clarified that Chomsky’s [48] Minimalist syntax takes syntactic expressions to be formal objects, but this does not mean that formal semantics and Minimalist syntax are on the same formal footing. While Minimalist syntax takes syntax to be a formal system grounded in the mind/brain, formal semantics deals with formal-logical patterns of meaning that have an externalist orientation. This paper refers to the latter, when talking about formal-logical structures of linguistic meaning. Besides, Chomsky’s [48] Minimalist syntax does not theorize about linguistic meaning, except for making room for logical representations that are constrained by syntax (also called Logical Form).

[2] Cognitive representations in Fodor’s language of thought have a combinatorial syntax akin to that of natural language such that if A is a thought and B is also a thought, then A and B can be combined, for example, to form a complex thought A ˄ B.