Abstract: Based on results from recent studies in neuroscience, cognitive science, brain imaging and psychology, we develop a model of language faculty. We suggest that the entire brain, all its subnets and processes are responsible for the formation of mental representations of the world, obtained gradually by the subject as an actor in the environment. We assume that mental representations are developed using inborn cognitive mechanisms for creating internal information units operated on a continuous bases for the internal ‘language of thought’ and the external ‘language of communication’. We consider that the underlying mental processing is self-centered and uses inborn operations such as ‘projection of the actor’ and ‘mirroring’. We discuss the four levels of cognitive apparatus related to the language faculty (perceptual, syntactic, semantic, and communicative). Language development relies on species-specific mental operations that comply with the general laws of efficient growth in biological systems, the laws that account for both the effective reiteration of the minimal meaningful unit in syntax and the semantics of concept formation.

Keywords: brain activity, fMRI, language, semantic space, concept, syntax, semantics

ACM classification keywords I.2.0: AI General I.2.7: Natural Language Processing

Link:

ON MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS: LANGUAGE STRUCTURE AND MEANING REVISED

Velina Slavova, Alona Soschen

http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol22/ijita22-04-p02.pdf