Meanings, Sounds, Signs, & Gestures

EasyChair Preprint 868

Abstract

Motivated by Noam Chomsky’s “rocks and kittens argument,” I argue that whatever some meanings are, they appear to have a massive prelinguistic dimension. I begin by addressing Michael Dummett’s questions regarding the possibility of theories of meaning by suggesting that we do all have, minimally speaking, a sense of what meanings are, which justifies the search for a theory. I also propose that a theory of meaning that relates lexical concepts with internal representations of the sort internalists like Chomsky, James McGilvray, and Paul Pietroski posit, is in line with recent studies on infants and nonhuman animals.

Keyphrases: Externalism, Generativism, Innate, Internalism, Lexical item, biolinguistics, concepts, innate concept, innate idea, internal representation, language, lexical concept, logical form, massive prelinguistic dimension, meanings, nonhuman animal, paul pietroski posit, polysemy, semantics, theories, understanding

@booklet{EasyChair:868,
  author    = {Tristan Tondino},
  title     = {Meanings, Sounds, Signs, & Gestures},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 868},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}