The Emergence of Meaning

Stephen Crain is a Distinguished Professor at Macquarie University and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He is also Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders.

• 1. Logic and human languages; 2. Competing approaches to language and logic; 3. The case for logical nativism; 4. Scope parameters; 5. How something can be both positive and negative; 6. Two logical operators for the price of one.

'This careful and sophisticated study provides powerful empirical evidence, from many sources, for logical nativism, the thesis that human languages make use of the logical concepts and laws of classical logic, and that these are contingent facts that are not learned and not required for a rational creature. It extends the conclusion to other aspects of natural language, its acquisition and use. The conclusions are compelling, and of great import for linguistics, philosophical logic, and psychology of language and mind quite generally.' Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology