Universität Wien

420012 SE Language in the Cognitive Sciences (2012W)

8.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 42 - Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliches Doktoratsstudium
Continuous assessment of course work

Erster Termin: Donnerstag, 11.10.2012, Letzter Termin: Donnerstag, 31.01.2013;

Do wtl. von 11.10.2012 bis 31.01.2013, 18.00 - 19:30

Ort: 1090 Wien, Sensengasse 3a, Hörsaal 1, 1 Stock
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 50 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes

Currently no class schedule is known.

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Human language is studied by various branches of the cognitive sciences (including philosophers, psychologists, and linguists), many of whom view it as what sets the humans apart from other species. In this seminar, we will review how different disciplines look at language, and examine the arguments for treating it as a specialized sub-system of the mind and consequently of cognition. Some important issues in this context concern complexity, abstractness, universality, emergence, variation, uniformity and speed of acquisition across cultures and population groups, which also necessitates distinguishing between questions concerning language as a communicative system and questions concerning the computations underlying this system, such as those underlying recursion. Concomitantly, we will discuss how linguistics fits into cognitive science by looking in particular at issues such as nativism vs. empiricism, formalism vs. functionalism, and grammar vs. analogy.

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Reading list

Carruthers, P. 2011. Language in cognition. In E.Margolis, R.Samuels, and S.Stich (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, N. 1975. Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon. [Especially Chapter 1: On cognitive capacity]
Cummins, R. 1975. Functional analysis. The Journal of Philosophy 72:741-765.
Darwin, C. 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation with Sex. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street.
Fitch, W.T., M. D. Hauser and N. Chomsky. 2005. The evolution of the language
faculty: clarifications and implications. Cognition 97:179–210.
Hauser, M., N. Chomsky and W. T. Fitch. 2002. The faculty of language:
what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298:1569-1579.
Jackendoff, R. and S. Pinker. 2005. The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky). Cognition 97:211–225.
Kirby, S. 2007. The evolution of language. In R. Dunbar and L. Barrett (eds) Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 669-681. Oxford University Press.
Pinker, S. and R. Jackendoff. 2005. The faculty of language: what’s special about it? Cognition 95:201–236.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 02.10.2023 00:26