Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes

What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, in recent decades they have almost dropped from sight among those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists, who discuss various ways in which language may be implicated in human cognition.

• Interdisciplinary volume covering philosophy, psychology and linguistics • The only recent interdisciplinary treatment of the language-and-thought issue • Essays by both well-known authors and up-and-coming researchers

1. Introduction: opening up options Peter Carruthers and Jill Boucher; Part I: Language, development and evolution; 2. Thought before language: the expression of motion events prior to the impact of a conventional language model Susan Goldin-Meadow and Ming-Yu Zheng; 3. The prerequisites for language acquisition: evidence from cases of anomalous language development Jill Boucher; 4. Some thoughts about the evolution of lads, with special reference to Tom and Sam Juan-Carlos Gómez; 5. Thinking in language? Evolution and a modularist possibility Peter Carruthers; Part II: Language, reasoning and concepts; Introduction Peter Carruthers and Jill Boucher; 6. Aphasic language, aphasic thought: an investigation of propositional thinking in an a-propositional aphasic Rosemary Varley; 7. Representing representations Gabriel Segal; 8. Magic words: how language augments human computation Andy Clark; 9. The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson; 10. Convention-based semantics and the development of language Stephen Laurence; Part III: Language and conscious reasoning; Introduction Peter Carruthers and Jill Boucher; 11. Language, thought, and the language of thought: Aunty's own argument revisited Martin Davies; 12. Natural language and virtual belief Keith Frankish; 13. The meta-intentional nature of executive functions and theory of mind Josef Perner; 14. Reflections on language and mind Daniel Dennett.