What is it about?
Binding regulates the way meanings are assigned to referential expressions such as pronouns during language production and comprehension. This study shows by using a computational model of human linguistic information processing how the well-known binding effects (Conditions A-C) emerge from the way language and cognition interact. We can think of binding as a phenomenon at the "outer edge" of language.
Featured Image
Photo by Ecliptic Graphic on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This study attempts to improve our understanding of binding in two ways. First, it systematically reviews binding data from Finnish and deduces it from the proposed interface hypothesis. Second, and more importantly, the study uses the natural scientific method in which the hypothesis, defined in a completely unambiguous way, is justified by showing that the data follows from the theory by deductive calculation. In other words, the study relies on a rigorous proof instead of informal argumentation for its justification.
Perspectives
This work relies on semantic notions such as coreference, discourse and semantic ontology that I had to include into the model in a fully unambiguous form. This forced me to revisit several fundamental philosophical questions such as the nature of meaning, truth, synonymy and the relation between mind and the external world, and to post these question in a completely new computational framework.
Pauli Brattico
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Binding in Finnish and the language-cognition interface, Journal of Uralic Linguistics, October 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/jul.00043.bra.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
