Expos=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=E9_Dany_Jaspers=2C_25_f=E9vrier=2C_?=10h, Paris 8

[Patricia Cabredo Hofherr]

L'UMR 7023 a le plaisir de vous inviter, dans le cadre de son séminaire

à un exposé de

*Dany Jaspers, CRISSP (HUBrussels, KULeuven)
**Broad and narrow language faculties in concept formation*

Date : lundi 25 février 2013
Heure :  10-12

Lieu :  Salle D-143, Bâtiment D, Univ Paris 8, St Denis

Plan d'accès:
http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/Plans-d-acces,672.html

Page ww du séminaire :
http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/Seminaire-de-l-UMR-7023-2012-2013.html
Résumé

*Broad and narrow language faculties in concept formation
Dany Jaspers, CRISSP (HUBrussels, KULeuven)*

In this talk on quantifiers, colour percepts and colour concepts, proof 
will be provided that Wittgensteinwas right when he wrote in his 
"Remarks on Colour" (1977: III-46): "Among the colours: Kinship and 
Contrast. (And that is logic)". It will be argued that his and the 
Vienna Circleintuition about the link between colour and logic has to be 
taken literally. Relations of opposition between primary and secondary 
chromatic percepts can indeed be shown to be algebraically the same as 
those between the three primary items (/all, some, none/) in the lexical 
class of quantifiers and their contradictories. Moreover, this 
surprising homology manifests itself in parallel asymmetries of 
lexicalisation. For logical operators Blanché (1953, 1969), Horn (1972, 
1989, 1990, 2012) and others since have discussed the so-called O-corner 
problem, i.e. the artificial nature of single-item lexicalisation 
/nand/for the propositional operator in the Boethian O-corner and the 
nonexistence of the corresponding O-corner predicate calculus operators 
/*nall, *noth/(= not-both), etc. For the purposes of single-word 
lexicalisation, the traditional square apparently seems to be "dépourvue 
de son poste O" (Blanché 1953, 95); in Horn's terms: "a three-cornered 
square". In the realm of colour terms, a similar bifurcation between 
natural (/RGBY/) and nonnatural specialised lexis (including /cyan/, for 
instance/)/is observed. Starting from the asymmetries, it will be shown 
how small subsets of logical and colour terms are organised by the same 
system of oppositions and very commonly lexicalized 
cross-linguistically, as if by conceptual pressure, while other terms 
are less frequently lexicalized, with lexicalisation largely determined 
by utility or frequency. This bifurcation will be shown to be due to a 
constraint on concept formation. The latter suggests that Hauser, 
Chomsky and Fitch's (2002) distinction between an internal computational 
system FLN (Faculty of language-narrow sense) and an internal 
computational system plus its accompanying "sensory-motor" and 
"conceptual-intentional" systems FLB (Faculty of language-broad 
sense)might be applicable to individual components of the linguistic 
system, in casu the lexicon.

*References*: Blanché, R. (1953) "Sur l'opposition des concepts", 
/Theoria/, 19. ?Blanché, R. (1969) /Structures intellectuelles. Essai 
sur l'organisation systématique des concepts/, Paris, Vrin. ?Hauser, 
Chomsky & Fitch(2002) The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, 
and how did it evolve? /Science 298/: 1569-1579. ?Horn, L. (1972) /On 
the Semantic Properties of Logical Operators in English. /PhD 
dissertation, UCLA. ?Horn, L. (1989) /A Natural History of Negation/, 
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.??Horn, L.(1990) Hamburgers and 
truth: Why Gricean inference is Gricean. /BLS /*16, *454-471. ?Horn, L. 
2012, /Histoire/d'*O: Lexical pragmatics and the geometry of opposition. 
In Jean-Yves /Béziau/& Gilbert Payette (eds.) New Perspectives on the 
Square of Opposition -- A General Framework for Cognition, Peter Lang, 
New York*. *?Jaspers, D.(2012), Logic and Colour, /Logica Universalis/, 
Volume 6, Issue 1-2, pp 227-248.


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