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Detail of contribution

Auteur: Boban ARSENIJEVIC

Titre:
Context representation retrieval and update and the nature of the syntax-semantics interface


Abstract/Résumé: A view of language is presented in which syntax is an algorithm for the retrieval and update of a relevant context representation. Our cognitive apparatus builds, maintains and retrieves rich cross-modular context representations that can be seen as webs of referents (connected by their mutual relations). A referent is no more than a set of relations with a number of other such sets (i.e. with a number of other referents). A linguistic expression is semantically interpretable if it specifies a set of relations (each specified for its second argument), and the relevant context representation contains a referent represented as a superset of the set specified by the expression. I examine the role of syntax in the architecture of language taken this perspective.