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Focus expressions in Yom
(2005)
This paper discusses constructions like “We’ll have two beers and a coffee.” that are typically used for beverage orders in restaurant contexts. We compare the behaviour of nouns in these constructions in three Germanic languages, English, Icelandic, and German, and take a closer look at the correlation of the morpho-syntactic and semantic-conceptual changes involved here. We show that even within such a closely related linguistic sample, one finds three different grammatical options for the expression of the same conceptual transition. Our findings suggest an analysis of coercion as a genuinely semantic phenomenon, a phenomenon that is located on a level of semantic representations that serves as an interface between the conceptual and the grammatical system and takes into account inter- and intralinguistic variations.
Accusations are a very frequent type of speech act both in everyday life and in formal controversies, and answering accusations is a sophisticated type of linguistic practice well worth analysing from a pragmatic point of view. In my paper I shall first describe some basic properties of accusations and characteristic types of reactions to accusations, i. e. denying the alleged fact, making excuses, and giving justifications. I then go on to describe some fundamental functions of accusations in controversies. Using the basic patterns of accusations and reactions to accusations as an object of comparison, I then analyse some relevant exchanges from historical controversies (l6th to 18th century), among them famous polemical interactions like the Hobbes-Bramhall controversy, but also less well-known debates from the fields of medicine and theology. The present paper is both a contribution to the theory of controversy and to the pragmatic history of controversies. Keywords: historical pragmatics, theory of controversy, ad hominem moves, dynamics of controversy
In the last decade, the Penn treebank has become the standard data set for evaluating parsers. The fact that most parsers are solely evaluated on this specific data set leaves the question unanswered how much these results depend on the annotation scheme of the treebank. In this paper, we will investigate the influence which different decisions in the annotation schemes of treebanks have on parsing. The investigation uses the comparison of similar treebanks of German, NEGRA and TüBa-D/Z, which are subsequently modified to allow a comparison of the differences. The results show that deleted unary nodes and a flat phrase structure have a negative influence on parsing quality while a flat clause structure has a positive influence.
This paper develops a framework for TAG (Tree Adjoining Grammar) semantics that brings together ideas from different recent approaches.Then, within this framework, an analysis of scope is proposed that accounts for the different scopal properties of quantifiers, adverbs, raising verbs and attitude verbs. Finally, including situation variables in the semantics, different situation binding possibilities are derived for different types of quantificational elements.
This paper profiles significant differences in syntactic distribution and differences in word class frequencies for two treebanks of spoken and written German: the TüBa-D/S, a treebank of transliterated spontaneous dialogs, and the TüBa-D/Z treebank of newspaper articles published in the German daily newspaper ´die tageszeitung´(taz). The approach can be used more generally as a means of distinguishing and classifying language corpora of different genres.
Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars (MCTAG) is a formalism that has been shown to be useful for many natural language applications. The definition of MCTAG however is problematic since it refers to the process of the derivation itself: a simultaneity constraint must be respected concerning the way the members of the elementary tree sets are added. Looking only at the result of a derivation (i.e., the derived tree and the derivation tree), this simultaneity is no longer visible and therefore cannot be checked. I.e., this way of characterizing MCTAG does not allow to abstract away from the concrete order of derivation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an alternative definition of MCTAG that characterizes the trees in the tree language of an MCTAG via the properties of the derivation trees the MCTAG licences.
When a statistical parser is trained on one treebank, one usually tests it on another portion of the same treebank, partly due to the fact that a comparable annotation format is needed for testing. But the user of a parser may not be interested in parsing sentences from the same newspaper all over, or even wants syntactic annotations for a slightly different text type. Gildea (2001) for instance found that a parser trained on the WSJ portion of the Penn Treebank performs less well on the Brown corpus (the subset that is available in the PTB bracketing format) than a parser that has been trained only on the Brown corpus, although the latter one has only half as many sentences as the former. Additionally, a parser trained on both the WSJ and Brown corpora performs less well on the Brown corpus than on the WSJ one. This leads us to the following questions that we would like to address in this paper: - Is there a difference in usefulness of techniques that are used to improve parser performance between the same-corpus and the different-corpus case? - Are different types of parsers (rule-based and statistical) equally sensitive to corpus variation? To achieve this, we compared the quality of the parses of a hand-crafted constraint-based parser and a statistical PCFG-based parser that was trained on a treebank of German newspaper text.
The present study examines native and nonnative perceptual processing of semantic information conveyed by prosodic prominence. Five groups of German learners of English each listened to one of 5 experimental conditions. Three conditions differed in place of focus accent in the sentence and two conditions were with spliced stimuli. The experiment condition was presented first in the learners’ L1 (German) and then in a similar set in the L2 (English). The effect of the accent condition and of the length and position of the target in the sentence was evaluated in a probe recognition task. In both the L1 and L2 tasks there was no significant effect in any of the five focus conditions. Target position and target word length had an effect in the L1 task. Word length did not affect accuracy rates in the L2 task. For probe recognition in the L2, word length and the position of the target interacted with the focus condition.
In this paper, we present the Multiple Annotation approach, which solves two problems: the problem of annotating overlapping structures, and the problem that occurs when documents should be annotated according to different, possibly heterogeneous tag sets. This approach has many advantages: it is based on XML, the modeling of alternative annotations is possible, each level can be viewed separately, and new levels can be added at any time. The files can be regarded as an interrelated unit, with the text serving as the implicit link. Two representations of the information contained in the multiple files (one in Prolog and one in XML) are described. These representations serve as a base for several applications.
This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.
The semantics of ellipsis
(2005)
There are four phenomena that are particularly troublesome for theories of ellipsis: the existence of sloppy readings when the relevant pronouns cannot possibly be bound; an ellipsis being resolved in such a way that an ellipsis site in the antecedent is not understood in the way it was there; an ellipsis site drawing material from two or more separate antecedents; and ellipsis with no linguistic antecedent. These cases are accounted for by means of a new theory that involves copying syntactically incomplete antecedent material and an analysis of silent VPs and NPs that makes them into higher order definite descriptions that can be bound into.
In order to investigate the empirical properties of focus, it is necessary to diagnose focus (or: “what is focused”) in particular linguistic examples. It is often taken for granted that the application of one single diagnostic tool, the so-called question-answer test, which roughly says that whatever a question asks for is focused in the answer, is a fool-proof test for focus. This paper investigates one example class where such uncritical belief in the question-answer test has led to the assumption of rather complex focus projection rules: in these examples, pitch accent placement has been claimed to depend on certain parts of the focused constituents being given or not. It is demonstrated that such focus projection rules are unnecessarily complex and in turn require the assumption of unnecessarily complicated meaning rules, not to speak of the difficulties to give a precise semantic/pragmatic definition of the allegedly involved givenness property. For the sake of the argument, an alternative analysis is put forward which relies solely on alternative sets following Mats Rooth´s work, and avoids any recourse to givenness. As it turns out, this alternative analysis is not only simpler but also makes in a critical case the better predictions.
This paper discusses the use of XSLT stylesheets as a filtering mechanism for refining the results of user queries on treebanks. The discussion is within the context of the TIGER treebank, the associated search engine and query language, but the general ideas can apply to any search engine for XML-encoded treebanks. It will be shown that important classes of linguistic phenomena can be accessed by applying relatively simple XSLT templates to the output of a query, effectively simulating the universal quantifier for a subset of the query language.
We present a system for the linguistic exploration and analysis of lexical cohesion in English texts. Using an electronic thesaurus-like resource, Princeton WordNet, and the Brown Corpus of English, we have implemented a process of annotating text with lexical chains and a graphical user interface for inspection of the annotated text. We describe the system and report on some sample linguistic analyses carried out using the combined thesaurus-corpus resource.
Heterogeneity and standardization in data, use, and annotation : a diachronic corpus of German
(2005)
This paper describes the standardization problems that come up in a diachronic corpus: it has to cope with differing standards with regard to diplomaticity, annotation, and header information. Such highly heterogeneous texts must be standardized to allow for comparative research without (too much) loss of information.
Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting.
Elke Kasimir´s paper (in this volume) argues against employing the notion of Givenness in the explanation of accent assignment. I will claim that the arguments against Givenness put forward by Kasimir are inconclusive because they beg the question of the role of Givenness. It is concluded that, more generally, arguments against Givenness as a diagnostic for information structural partitions should not be accepted offhand, since the notion of Givenness of discourse referents is (a) theoretically simple, (b) readily observable and quantifiable, and (c) bears cognitive significance.
Fronting of an infinite VP across a finite main verb - akin to German "VP-topicalization" - can be found also in Czech and Polish. The paper discusses evidence from large corpora for this process and some of its properties, both syntactic and information-structural. Based on this case, criteria for more user-friedly searching and retrieval of corpus data in syntactic research are being developed.
This paper describes the creation and preparation of TUSNELDA, a collection of corpus data built for linguistic research. This collection contains a number of linguistically annotated corpora which differ in various aspects such as language, text sorts / data types, encoded annotation levels, and linguistic theories underlying the annotation. The paper focuses on this variation on the one hand and the way how these heterogeneous data are integrated into one resource on the other hand.
The study offers a discourse-based account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which are generally considered to be lexical exponents of the stage-level/individual-level contrast. It argues against the popular view that the distinction between SLPs and ILPs rests on a fundamental cognitive division of the world that is reflected in the grammar. As it happens, conceptual oppositions like “temporary vs. permanent” or “arbitrary vs. essential“ provide only a preference for the interpretation of estar and ser. In addition, the evidence for an SLP/ILP impact on the grammar turns out to be far less conclusive than is currently assumed. The study argues against event-based accounts of the ser/estar contrast in particular, showing that ser and estar pattern alike in failing all of the standard eventuality tests. The discourse-based account proposed instead assumes that ser and estar both display the same lexical semantics (which is identical to the semantics of English be, German sein, etc.); estar differs from ser only in presupposing a relation to a specific discourse situation. By using estar a speaker restricts his or her claim to a specific discourse situation, whereas by using ser, the speaker makes no such restriction. The preference for interpreting estar predications as denoting temporary properties and ser predications as denoting permanent properties follows from economy principles driving the pragmatic legitimation of estars discourse dependence. The analysis proposed in this paper can also account for the observation that ser predications do not give rise to thetic judgements. The proposal is couched in terms of the framework of DRT.
“Comments are very welcome!” This basic attitude and the many ways of implementing it contribute immensely to the fascination of engaging in scientific research. I am grateful to Theoretical Linguistics for providing a public platform for this kind of scholarly exchange and I thank all commentators for their thoughtful, stimulating, and often challenging contributions to my target article. My response will address two main issues that are raised by the commentaries. The first issue is shaped by a cluster of questions relating to ontology. The second issue concerns questions of methodology pertaining in particular to the problem of judging data.
Since Donald Davidson’s seminal work “The Logical Form of Action Sentences” (1967) event arguments have become an integral component of virtually every semantic theory. Over the past years Davidson´s proposal has been continuously extended such that nowadays event(uality) arguments are generally associated not only with action verbs but with predicates of all sorts. The reasons for such an extension are seldom explicitly justified. Most problematical in this respect is the case of stative expressions. By taking a closer look at copula sentences the present study assesses the legitimacy of stretching the Davidsonian notion of events and discusses its consequences. A careful application of some standard eventuality diagnostics (perception reports, combination with locative modifiers and manner adverbials) as well as some new diagnostics (behavior of certain degree adverbials) reveals that copular expressions do not behave as expected under a Davidsonian perspective: they fail all eventuality tests, regardless of whether they represent stage-level or individual-level predicates. In this respect, copular expressions pattern with stative verbs like know, hate, and resemble, which in turn differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, and sleep. The latter pass all of the eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions. On the basis of these empirical observations and taking up ideas of Kim (1969, 1976) and Asher (1993, 2000), an alternative account of copular expressions (and stative verbs) is provided, according to which the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). Considerations on some logical properties, viz. closure conditions and the latent infinite regress of eventualities, suggest that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities with Kimian states may yield not only a more adequate analysis of copula sentences but also a better understanding of eventualities in general.
In this paper I will discuss the formation of different types of yes/no questions in Serbian (examples in (1)), focusing on the syntactically and semantically puzzling example (1d), which involves the negative auxiliary inversion. Although there is a negative marker on the fronted auxiliary, the construction does not involve sentential negation. This coincides with the fact that the negative quantifying NPIs cannot be licensed. The question formation and sentential negation have similar syntactic effects cross-linguistically. This has led to various attempts to formulate a unifying syntactic account of the phenomena (ever since Klima 1964). One striking fact about the two syntactic contexts is that both license weak NPIs (Negative Polarity Items). It has been suggested (cf. Laka 1990, Culicover 1991) that the derivation of both interrogatives and negatives involves the same type of functional projection PolP (polarity phrase). One such account of the formation of negative interrogatives in Serbo- Croatian is offered by Progovac (2005). She proposes that there are two PolPs optionally cooccurring in the same clause, in which both positive and negative polarity items check their positive or negative features (following Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991) feature-checking account of negative structures, and the insights of Brown(1999) on the negation in Russian). On her account, the negative auxiliary question in (1d), is the case when both polarity phrases are present. The higher has [-pos +neg] features, and the lower one (below TP) is [-pos -neg]. Although her account correctly predicts the ungrammaticality of (2a) in contrast with (1c), it wrongly predicts the (2b) to be grammatical. I will argue that Progovac’s theory regarding the nature of the PolP is wrong. It employs both the binary feature valuation on the polarity head and the hierarchical ordering of the two polarity phrases, which eventually leads to overgeneration. On the account presented here the nature of the question marker (li vs zar) is highly relevant. Notice that (1b) and (1d) express presuppositions regarding the truth value of the propositions. In this way they contrast with (1a) and (1c). In addition, the type (1b) (with the question particle zar) can introduce both the positive and negative presupposition as shown in (3), which, semantically, makes this construction compatible with negative auxiliary questions in English (4a). The polarity items licensed in the relevant structures are also of the same type in both languages. The fronted-negative-auxiliary questions (1d) in Serbian are only possible with the particle li. In this case the presupposition is exclusively positive. The peculiar question/focus marking function of li (in Bulgarian and Russian) is well known. However, it is always assumed that its focus marking role is not relevant for the formation of yes/no questions. This I believe is not correct. The syntactic explanation of the interpretational facts points to the following: A) The possibility of the separate lexical encoding (particle zar) of the ‘rhetorical’ yes/no questions in Serbian allows the embedding of both positive and negated sentences, in which case the (weak) NPIs can remain in local relation with the negated verb. B) Recall that Serbian is an NC language, which requires local/c-command relation between the verbal negative marker and the NPI. With the negative inverted auxiliary questions this condition is not met, and the licensing of an n-word is not possible. C) The impossibility of licensing a weak NPI (i-words in the examples below) is due to the nature of the question marker li. (1) a. Da li je Vera videla ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? DA Q aux Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Did Vera see anyone/someone/noone?” b. Zar je Vera videla ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? ZAR aux Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Is it really the fact that Vera saw anyone/someone?” c. Je li Vera videla ikoga / nekoga /*nikoga? aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Did Vera see anyone/someone/noone?” d. Nije li Vera videla *ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Didn’t Vera see someone?”/ “Vera saw someone, didn’t she?” (2) a. *Nije li Vera videla nikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg noone b. *Nije li Vera videla ikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone (3) a. Zar je Vera videla nekoga / ikoga? ZAR aux Vera see.part.F.Sg someone/anyone b. Zar Vera nije videla nekoga/nikoga? ZAR Vera neg+aux see.part.F.Sg someone/anyone (4) a. Didn’t Vera (NOT) see someone/anyone? b. Vera saw someone, didn’t she?
In many languages, a passive-like meaning may be obtained through a noncanonical passive construction. The get passive (1b) in English, the se faire passive (2b) in French and the kriegen passive (3b) in German represent typical manifestations. This squib focuses on the behavior of the get-passive in English and discusses a number of restrictions associated with it as well as the status of get.
This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A´-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the operator constituent is linked to an A-position in the matrix clause; this paradox is resolved by assuming a Control-like approach that involves movement from the embedded clause into a theta-position in the matrix clause with subsequent short A´- movement. The coreferential pronoun is interpreted as a resumptive heading a Big-DP which hosts the antecedent in its specifier.
Plural semantics for natural language understanding : a computational proof-theoretic approach
(2005)
The semantics of natural language plurals poses a number of intricate problems – both from a formal and a computational perspective. In this thesis I investigate problems of representing, disambiguating and reasoning with plurals from a computational perspective. The work defines a computationally suitable representation for important plural constructions, proposes a tractable resolution algorithm for semantic plural ambiguities, and integrates an automatic reasoning component for plurals. My solution combines insights from formal semantics, computational linguistics and automated theorem proving and is based on the following main ideas. Whereas many existing approaches to plural semantics work on a model-theoretic basis using higher-order representation languages I propose a proof-theoretic approach to plural semantics based on a flat firstorder semantic representation language thus showing that a trade-off between expressive power and logical tractability can be found. The problem of automatic disambiguation of plurals is tackled by a deliberate decision to drastically reduce recourse to contextual knowledge for disambiguation but rely instead on structurally available and thus computationally manageable information. A further central aspect of the solution lies in carefully drawing the borderline between real ambiguity and mere indeterminacy in the interpretation of plural noun phrases. As a practical result of my computational proof-theoretic approach to plural semantics I can use my methods to perform automated reasoning with plurals by applying advanced firstorder theorem provers and model-generators available off-the shelf. The results are prototypically implemented within the two logic-oriented natural language understanding applications DRoPs and Attempto. DRoPs provides an automatic plural disambiguation component for uncontrolled natural language whereas Attempto works with a constructive disambiguation strategy for controlled natural language. Both systems provide tools for the automated analysis of technical texts allowing users for example to automatically detect inconsistencies, to perform question answering, to check whether a conjecture follows from a text or to find equivalences and redundancies.
Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis.
This paper advances a purely presuppositional analysis of intonation. I first show that a inspiring recent article by Geurts and van der Sandt (Theoretical Linguistics, 2004) that pursues the same goal cannot account for multiple foci. Then, I show that if it is assumed that destressed rather than focussed material is semantically marked, multiple foci are accounted for correctly.
DP is not a scope island
(2005)
The epistemic step
(2005)
Language planning for the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland has featured prominently in international language policy and planning literature over the years. Researchers in the field may not be up to date, however, with recent developments in the area of Irish language planning and their impact on the language ecology. This monograph describes the language planning situation in the Republic of Ireland in its historical and social contexts as well as delineating language policy and planning for the Irish language implemented over the past number of years, showing developments in education, community, media, religion and local politics.
Dictionaries contain lexicographic data whose occurrence is restricted to certain geo-graphical areas, subject fields, professions, etc. It is part of the duties of the lexicographer to give an account of such deviations to ensure a successful retrieval of the information on the part of the user. This contribution presents a discussion on labelling issues in the Dictionnaire Français–Mpongwé. Although the main focus is on the presentation of different types of labelling as well as problems in labelling, textual condensation procedures and mediostructural representations (to-gether with some aspects of the user perspective) are also critically evaluated. It is shown that these procedures reveal some inconsistencies which are not accounted for in the outer texts (front matter and back matter texts) of the dictionary. Finally suggestions are made for the improvement of the access structure of this dictionary.
A correct evaluation of the Slavic evidence for the reconstruction of the Indo- European proto-language requires an extensive knowledge of a considerable body of data. While the segmental features of the Slavic material are generally of corroborative value only, the prosodic evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of PIE. phonology. Due to the complicated nature of Slavic historical accentology, this has come to be realized quite recently.1 As a result, much of the earlier literature has become obsolete to the extent that it is based upon an interpretation which does not take the multifarious accentual developments into account. I shall give one example.
This paper addresses remarks made by Flemming (2003) to the effect that his analysis of the interaction between retroflexion and vowel backness is superior to that of Hamann (2003b). While Hamann maintained that retroflex articulations are always back, Flemming adduces phonological as well as phonetic evidence to prove that retroflex consonants can be non-back and even front (i.e. palatalised). The present paper, however, shows that the phonetic evidence fails under closer scrutiny. A closer consideration of the phonological evidence shows, by making a principled distinction between articulatory and perceptual drives, that a reanalysis of Flemming’s data in terms of unviolated retroflex backness is not only possible but also simpler with respect to the number of language-specific stipulations.
The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes.
Dutch has a three-way contrast in labiodental sounds, which causes problems for native speakers of German in their acquisition of Dutch, since German contrasts only two labiodentals. The present study investigates the perception of the Dutch labiodental fricative system by German L2 learners of Dutch and shows that native Germans with no or little knowledge of the Dutch language categorize the Dutch labiodental voiced fricative and approximant as their native voiced fricative. Advanced learners, however, succeed in acquiring a category for the voiced fricative, illustrating that plasticity in the perception of a second language develops with the amount of exposure to the language.
Theories of cognition that are based on information processing and representation are reactive (Rosen, 1985) or backwards looking, not anticipatory. In a previous article (Thibault, 2005a), I looked at the reasons why humans and bonobos do not need an innate language faculty in order to be minded, languaging beings. The present article takes up some of the questions explored there, but, it asks, on the other hand, what sort of a minded agent has language and what kind of account of language and more broadly meaning do we need to explain minded, languaged agents and the activities they participate in? Following Rosen (1985), I also take up and further develop a point first raised in Thibault (2004a: 187) on language as an anticipatory system, rather than a reactively ‘representational’ one (see also Bickhard, 2005).