Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure(Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)

In tackling a learning paradox - how children acquire argument structure - the author synthesizes literature in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics, and outlines explicit theories of the mental representation, the learning and development of verb meaning and syntax. He describes a new theory that has some surprising implications for the relation between language and thought.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 A learnability paradox: argument structure and the lexicon; the logical problem of language acquisition; Baker's paradox; attempted solutions to Baker's paradox. Part 2 Constraints on lexical rules: morphological and phonological constraints; semantic constraints; how semantic and morphological constraints might resolve Baker's paradox; evidence for criteria-governed productivity; problems for the criteria-governed productivity theory. Part 3 Constraints and the nature of argument structure: overview - why lexical rules carry semantic constraints; constraints of lexical rules as manifestations of more general phenomena; a theory of argument structure; on universality. Part 4 Possible and actual forms: the problem of negative exceptions; transitive action verbs as evidence for narrow subclasses; the nature of narrow conflation classes; defining and motivating subclasses of verbs licensing the four alterations; the relation between narrow-range and broad-range rules. Part 5 Representation: the need for a theory of lexicosemantic representation; is a theory of lexical semantics feasible?; evidence for a semantic subsystem underlying verb meanings; a cross-linguistic inventory of components of verb meaning; a theory of the representation of grammatically relevant semantic structures; explicit representations of lexical rules an lexicosemantic structures; summary. Part 6 Learning: linking rules; lexical semantic structures; broad conflation classes (thematic cores) and broad range lexical rules; summary of learning mechanisms. Part 7 Development: developmental sequence for argument structure alterations; the unlearning problem; children's argument structure changing rules are always semantically conditioned; do children's errors have the same cause as adults?; acquisition of verb meaning and errors in argument structure; some predictions about the acquisition of narrow-range rules; summary of development. Part 8 Conclusions: a brief summary of the resolution of the paradox; argument structure as a pointer between syntactic structure and propositions; the autonomy of semantic representation; implications for the semantic bootstrapping hyposthesis; conservatism, listedness and the lexicon; spatial schemas and abstract thought.

About the Author :
Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature have won numerous prizes.

Review :
" Learnability and Cognition is theoretically a big advance, beautifully reasoned, and a goldmine of information." Lila Gleitman "Pinker's book is a monumental study that sets a new standard for work on learnability." Ray Jackendoff , Brandeis University "Pinker's book is a monumental piece of work it sets a standard for work in learnability." Ray Jackendoff , Brandeis University