Language : a biological model / Ruth Garrett Millikan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Millikan, Ruth Garrett.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Philosophy.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

vii, 228 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.

Summary:

Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing them to biological norms that emerge from natural selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0199284768

0199284776

OCLC:

61115508

Publisher Number:

9780199284764

9780199284771

9780199284771 (pbk. : alk. paper)

9780199284764 (hbk. : alk. paper)