Some animals are born early, and acquire a “second nature”

1. Some animals are born early, and acquire a “second nature” infants become speakers of human languages, whose meaningful expressions can be used in thought and communication catterpillars become butterflies

2. Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle

3. Metamorphosis affects Lifestyle infants become speakers of human languages, whose meaningful expressions can be used in thought and communication

4. infants become speakers of human languages, whose meaningful expressions can be used in thought and communication What are human languages? What are the words and phrases of a human language? What are meanings of these linguistic expressions? How are they are related to our distinctively human concepts? How are they are related to the things we think and talk about?

5. Assumption: human children acquire languages of a special sort. (a) unbounded: each Human Language pairs endlessly many meanings of some kind with pronunciations of some kind (b) yet limited: Human Languages pair meanings with pronunciations in ways that respect substantive constraints Finite Languages More Permissive Languages possible languages Human Languages Gruesome Languages

6. unbounded yet limited… • Bingley is ready to please (a) Bingley is ready to please relevant parties (b) Bingley is ready to be pleased by relevant parties • Bingley is eager to please (a) Bingley is eager to please relevant parties #(b) Bingley is eager to be pleased by relevant parties • Bingley is easy to please #(a) Bingley can easily please relevant parties (b) Bingley can easily be pleased by relevant parties

7. unbounded yet limited… • hiker lost kept walking circles (a) The hiker who was lost kept walking in circles? (b) The hiker who lost was kept walking in circles? • Was the hiker who lost kept walking in circles? #(a) The hiker who was lost kept walking in circles? (b) The hiker who lost was kept walking in circles? • The senator called the donor from Texas. (a) The senator called the donor, and the donor was from Texas. (b) The senator called the donor, and the call was from Texas. #(c) The senator called the donor, and the senator was from Texas.

8. Finite Languages More Permissive Languages possible languages Human Languages Assumption: human children acquire languages of a special sort. unbounded yet limited procedures: children come to implement algorithms thatpair meanings with pronunciations in certain ways (1) Human linguistic meanings are (such that they can be) paired with pronunciations in these biologically implementable ways. (2) The details, including constraints on lexical and phrasal meanings, make some conceptions of meaning less plausible than others. Infinite Sets of Symbols Gruesome Languages

9. complexes of “dispositions to verbal behavior” strings of a “corpus” things ascribed by “radical interpreters” sets of “ordered pairs of strings and meanings” generative procedures We can use ‘language’ and ‘meaning’ to talk about many things… LANGUAGESMEANINGS concepts contents senses referents/extensions patterns of use intentions sets of possible worlds functions from contexts to extensions instructions for how to build concepts But for any Xs, it is an empirical question whether Human Languages pair Xs with pronunciations. 

10. Some “Recent” Work: Elaborating and Defending… a Chomsky-style conception of Human Languages a plausible companion conception of meaning proposals about “eventish” constructions: Small Verbs, Complex Events; Davidson reviews; On Explaining That; and a 2005 book, Events and Semantic Architecture papers, like Framing Event Variables, that highlight skepticism about semantic externalism and the need for substantive (non-disquotational) theories of meaning papers and a book in the works that provide the positive proposal: meanings are instructions for how to build (systematically composable) concepts of a special sort Poverty of Stimulus papers (often replying to critics): with Crain about kids and constrained homophony; with Berwick/Chomsky, updating some classic arguments collborative work on ‘most’ as a window into Language/Cognition interfaces acquiring words is a big deal: lexicalizing concepts involves "reformatting” (cp. Frege) composition is simple: phrasal meanings are conjunctive and monadic