Abstract for Lila Gleitman's talk

When we think about thinking: The acquisition of mental verbs
Lila Gleitman (University of Pennsylvania)
October 5, 2006 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - ; Room 6417, the CUNY Graduate Center

Among the more awesome feats of learning in the human repertoire is acquisition of the vocabulary of a first language. This is often said, and truly, to be accomplished via observation of the referential contingencies for a word's use (e.g., Locke, 1690; Grimshaw, 1981; Pinker, 1984). However it is at least as often said, also truly, that the implied procedures of observation beg the question of "relevance." This is because every scene observed is describable under countless descriptions (e.g., Plato ca420BC; Quine, 1960; Fodor, 1981). I will discuss some ways that the relevance problem may be solved by learners, by concentrating attention on the acquisition of two types of lexical item that seem to pose special problems for learning by observation. These are such credal verbs as think and know, and such perspective-verb pairs such as chase/flee and give/get.