A Synopsis by Prakash Mondal
This book examines the intrinsic connection between natural language and kinds of possible minds.... more This book examines the intrinsic connection between natural language and kinds of possible minds. By looking into the intricacies and complexities of different natural language phenomena within and across languages, this book aims to project a broader range of kinds of minds, insofar as they are formally characterized in terms of differentiated properties of natural language constructions in various linguistic phenomena. It is hoped that this can shed light not only on the type of mentality humans possess but also on the types of mentality machines, artifacts, other animals and even plants can plausibly have.
Mainstream theoretical linguistics has long maintained that linguistic representations are (inter... more Mainstream theoretical linguistics has long maintained that linguistic representations are (internalized) mental representations, and operations on such
Pragmatics and Cognition
This paper explores the link between rules of grammar, grammar formalisms and the architecture of... more This paper explores the link between rules of grammar, grammar formalisms and the architecture of the language faculty. In doing so, it provides a flexible meta-level theory of the language faculty through the postulation of general axioms that govern the interaction of different components of grammar. The idea is simply that such an abstract formulation allows us to view the structure of the language faculty independently of specific theoretical frameworks/formalisms. It turns out that the system of rules, axioms and constraints of grammar cannot be explicitly represented in a general architecture of the language faculty — which circumvents the ontological mismatch of mental representations and formal/axiomatic properties of language. Rather, the system of rules, axioms, constraints of grammar is intentionally projected by humans, and this projection realizes/instantiates what Dascal (1992) calls ‘psychopragmatics’. Relevant implications for linguistic theory, learnability and (computational) models of language processing are also explored.
Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences Vol 97: 464-473, 2013
This paper will deal with how and in what ways (linguistic) computation as part of linguistic com... more This paper will deal with how and in what ways (linguistic) computation as part of linguistic competence may relate to aspects of culture in the context of human cognition which
becomes viable by being grounded in the possible conjunction of mental computations and cultural praxis. The possibilities of cultural capacities are enormous across societies and/or
cultures, but linguistic computations as have been postulated are restricted by the nature of constraints specific to natural language. The purpose of this paper is to see the consequences of how these two can make cognition viable.
Pragmatics and Cognition Vol 21(1): 35-54, Sep 2013
In this paper a connection between intensionality, language and the intentional content of emotio... more In this paper a connection between intensionality, language and the intentional content of emotion will be drawn up through a demonstration of an intimate relationship between the intentionality of emotion and intensionality in language. What will be shown is that the intentionality of emotion can ultimately be traced to the intensionality of emotive expressions in intensional contexts. For this purpose, emotive predicates will be categorized in terms of their intensional behavior and regularities. They will then be brought forward for an explication of why and how far the intentionality of emotion is unique. The insights derived from the relevant analyses will then be employed for the implications and ramifications that might be thrown upon the fabric of emotion and language within the space of cognition.
Biosemiotics, Sep 2013
This paper seeks to understand machine cognition. The nature of machine cognition has been shroud... more This paper seeks to understand machine cognition. The nature of machine cognition has been shrouded in incomprehensibility. We have often encountered familiar arguments in cognitive science that human cognition is still faintly understood. This paper will argue that machine cognition is far less understood than even human cognition despite the fact that a lot about computer architecture and computational operations is known. Even if there have been putative claims about the transparency of the notion of machine computations, these claims do not hold out in unraveling machine cognition, let alone machine consciousness (if there is any such thing). The nature and form of machine cognition remains further confused also because of attempts to explain human cognition in terms of computation and to model/simulate (aspects of) human cognitive processing in machines. Given that these problems in characterizing machine cognition persist, a view of machine cognition that aims to avoid these problems is outlined. The argument that is advanced is that something becomes a computation in machines only when a human interprets it, which is a kind of semiotic causation. From this it follows that a computing machine is not engaged in a computation unless a human interprets what it is doing; instead, it is engaged in machine cognition, which is defined as a member or subset of the set of all possible mappings of inputs to outputs. The human interpretation, which is a semiotic process, gives meaning to what a machine does, and then what it does becomes a computation.
Biosemiotics Vol 5(1): 61-82, Apr 2012
This paper is an attempt at exploring the possibility of reconciling the two interpretations of b... more This paper is an attempt at exploring the possibility of reconciling the two interpretations of biolinguistics which have been recently projected by Koster (Biolinguistics 3(1):61–92, 2009). The two interpretations—trivial and nontrivial—can be roughly construed as non-internalist and internalist conceptions of biolinguistics respectively. The internalist approach boils down to a conception of language where language as a mental grammar in the form of I-language grows and functions like a biological organ. On the other hand, under such a construal consistent with Koster’s (Biolinguistics 3(1):61-92, 2009), the non-internalist version does not necessarily have to be externalist in nature; rather it is a matter of mutual reinforcement of biology and culture under the rubric of a co-evolutionary dynamics. Here it will be argued that the apparent dichotomy between these two conceptions of biolinguistics can perhaps be resolved if we have a richer synthesis that accounts for both internalism and non-internalism.
Speaking of Odors: A Crosslinguistic/cultural Survey, Book Chapter, 2013
Much of sensory perception is non-transitive in nature in that if we find X and Y and Y and Z ind... more Much of sensory perception is non-transitive in nature in that if we find X and Y and Y and Z indistinguishable, it is not necessary that we will also find X and Z indistinguishable (van Deemter 2010). This is because of the fact that there can be degrees of differences between X and Y and Y and Z which are beyond the detection of our perceptual apparatus and that these differences amount to a sizable difference that is identifiable through (sensory) perception. Roberts (1995) has argued that emotions are like perceptions. If this is so, emotional sensitivity should also work this way. This can be revealed through cases where the intentionality of emotions makes it possible for somebody X to be jubilant over, say, his victory over Y but not over Y's defeat to X even if X's victory and Y's defeat are equivalent to each other. This difference in emotional sensitivity can be properly analyzed if we assume that there is something intermediate between the two – say, going through the sequence of steps toward X's victory – and X's emotional sensitivity does not capture any difference between X's victory and the intermediate form and between the intermediate form and Y's defeat. The same can thus be proposed for olfaction which may find similar, say, odors X and Y and Y and Z, but detects X and Z to be dissimilar. Such intermediate degrees of difference that are beyond the sensitivity of perception or emotion or olfaction are not fully encoded in language. So non-transitivity underpins perception, emotion and olfaction making a case for invariances across domains of cognition.
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Vol 7735: 254-265, 2013
This paper aims at pointing out a range of differences between logical form as used in logic and ... more This paper aims at pointing out a range of differences between logical form as used in logic and logical form (LF) as used in the minimalist architecture of language. The differences will be shown from different angles based on the ways in which they differ in form and represent some natural language phenomena. The implications as following on from such differences will be then linked to the issue of whether semantic realization in mind/brain is computational. It will be shown that the differences between logical form as used in logic and logical form (LF) as used in the minimalist architecture of language will help us latch on to the realization that there is no determinate way in which semantics can be computational or computationally realized.
PACLIC (Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation) Proceedings, 2010
" This paper is aimed at uncovering a unifying computational grounding beneath a diverse range of... more " This paper is aimed at uncovering a unifying computational grounding beneath a diverse range of cases of quantificational scope effects both within and across languages. Since quantificational scope readings are quite variable and interspersed with issues of modularity and interfaces of grammar, an underlying and universal generalization is certainly hard to come by. Research on quantification is not new at all; studies and
research done on quantification have not yet been able to arrive at a useful but universally valid and satisfactorily unified account of how quantificational readings are derived at all, let alone computationally. Here in this paper, a preliminary sketch of a unified three-tier computational model will be drawn up to show how quantificational scope readings across languages can be computed and derived. For this purpose, principles drawn from recent derivational accounts of quantificational scope will be aligned properly to eliminate their incompatibilities with each other. "
Research in Computing Science Vol 46: 55-66, 2010
This paper is aimed at exploring the hidden fundamental computational property of natural languag... more This paper is aimed at exploring the hidden fundamental computational property of natural language that has been so elusive that it has made all attempts to characterize its real computational property ultimately fail. Earlier natural language was thought to be context-free. However, it was gradually realized that this does not hold much water given that a range of natural language phenomena have been found as being of non-context-free character that they have almost scuttled plans to brand natural language context-free. So it has been suggested that natural language is mildly context-sensitive and to some extent context-free. In all, it seems that the issue over the exact computational property has not yet been solved. Against this background it will be proposed that this exact computational property of natural language is perhaps the N-th dimension of language, if what we mean by dimension is nothing but universal (computational) property of natural language.
PACLIC (Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation) Proceedings, 2009
In this paper I aim at sketching out in bare outline a new model/framework of language processing... more In this paper I aim at sketching out in bare outline a new model/framework of language processing with its implications for natural language processing. Research in theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics and mathematical linguistics has delineated the ways natural language can be represented and modeled. Studies in cognitive(neuro)science, on the other hand, have shown how language processing is implemented inhuman cognitive machinery. Here an attempt will be made to integrate all these findings into a mathematical model of language processing which will point to some potential constraints on what natural language processing can achieve or do and what it possibly cannot.
RANLP (Proceedings of International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing) Proceedings, 2009
In this paper an exploratory map of what intelligentnatural language processing systems can achie... more In this paper an exploratory map of what intelligentnatural language processing systems can achieve will bedrawn up, given the advances that have been made in recentyears as revealed in the latest developments in practicalapplications of natural language technology in areas as diverseas natural language generation, natural languageunderstanding, machine translation, dialog system etc. Here amathematical exploration of the issue in question will lay outthe constraints on what they can achieve in their goal of automatizing language processing that humans do. It will beshown that these constraints together constitute a fundamentallimit which these systems seem to fail to cross.
Interdisciplinary Journal of Linguistics, Vol(5):195-224, Feb 5, 2012
In sociolinguistics and in society at large there are several phenomena and constructs like
regi... more In sociolinguistics and in society at large there are several phenomena and constructs like
register, repertoire, argot, variety, dialect, style, diglossia ( or multiglossia), sociolect, accent,
code switching, code mixing. These are part of a speech-society interactive relationship; they have
no isolated existence other than that in which all these sociolinguistic phenomena and constructs
mix up with one another, grow up and hence co-exist in an integrated setting.
In every society, this sort of integration happens, but the degree to which those phenomena mix
varies from one society to another, from one person to another and even within an individual from
one situation to another. This article postulates that the organic co-existence of these phenomena (and constructs)
happens everywhere in every utterance (and sometimes in writing), and that kind of mixture can
be placed on a continuum on one side of which exists the most mixed case and on the other, the least
mixed.
Books by Prakash Mondal
The Cognitive Variation of Semantic Structures
Routledge, 2024
This book explores the cognitive constraints and principles of variation in structures of linguis... more This book explores the cognitive constraints and principles of variation in structures of linguistic meaning across languages. It unifies cognitive-semantic representations with formal-semantic representations to make a unique contribution to the study of typological generalizations and universals in natural language semantics. This unified approach not only helps reveal why semantic structures have the observed variation they have but also sheds light on the compelling cognitive and formal regularities and patterns in the variation of linguistic semantics. The book also advances the general principles of a cognitively oriented semantic typology.
Springer Nature, 2019
This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whet... more This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whether the biological foundations of language can offer deep insights into the nature and form of language and linguistic cognition. Challenging the assumption in biolinguistics and neurolinguistics that natural language and linguistic cognition can be reconciled with neurobiology, the author argues that reducing representation to cognitive systems and cognitive systems to neural populations is reductive, leading to inferences about the cognitive basis of linguistic performance based on assuming (false) dependencies. Instead, he finds that biological implementations of cognitive rather than the biological structures themselves, are the driver behind linguistic structures. In particular, this book argues that the biological roots of language are useful only for an understanding of the emergence of linguistic capacity as a whole, but ultimately irrelevant to understanding the character of language. Offering an antidote to the current thinking embracing ‘biologism’ in linguistic sciences, it will be of interest to readers in linguistics, the cognitive and brain sciences, and the points at which these disciplines converge with the computer sciences.
In Natural Language and Possible Minds: How Language Uncovers the Cognitive Landscape of Nature P... more In Natural Language and Possible Minds: How Language Uncovers the Cognitive Landscape of Nature Prakash Mondal attempts to demonstrate that language can reveal the hidden logical texture of diverse types of mentality in non-humans, contrary to popular belief. The widely held assumption in mainstream cognitive science is that language being humanly unique introduces an anthropomorphic bias in investigations into the nature of other possible minds. This book turns this around by formulating a lattice of mental structures distilled from linguistic structures constituting the cognitive building blocks of an ensemble of biological entities/beings. This turns out to have surprising consequences for machine cognition as well. Challenging mainstream views, this book will appeal to cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, linguists and also cognitive ethologists.
This book investigates the connection between language, mind and computation in theoretical lingu... more This book investigates the connection between language, mind and computation in theoretical linguistics in particular and cognitive science in general. The relationship between grammar, mind and computation which buttresses much of mainstream linguistic theory is rarely questioned but forms the basis of many theoretical developments and empirical advances. Language, Mind and Computation challenges and critiques the basis of this relationship, attempting to demonstrate that natural language grammars cannot be both mental and computational if the nature of interpretation is unaccounted for. This ambitious book will be of interest to theoretical linguists, philosophers of language, psycholinguists and even computer scientists.
Reviews:
'This book sheds a new light on the relationship between language, mind and computation as conceived of in current linguistic theory.' Marcelo Dascal, Tel Aviv University, Israel
This book examines linguistic expressions of emotion in intensional contexts and offers a formall... more This book examines linguistic expressions of emotion in intensional contexts and offers a formally elegant account of the relationship between language and emotion. The author presents a compelling case for the view that there exist, contrary to popular belief, logical universals at the intersection of language and emotive content. This book shows that emotive structures in the mind that are widely assumed to be not only subjectively or socio-culturally variable but also irrelevant to a general theory of cognition offer an unusually suitable ground for a formal theory of emotive representations, allowing for surprising logical and cognitive consequences for a theory of cognition. Challenging mainstream assumptions in cognitive science and in linguistics, this book will appeal to linguists, philosophers of the mind, linguistic anthropologists, psychologists and cognitive scientists of all persuasions.
Papers by Prakash Mondal
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications , 2025
A familiar and fairly well-known distinction exists between a derivational type of grammar (for e... more A familiar and fairly well-known distinction exists between a derivational type of grammar (for example, mainstream Generative Grammar) and a representational type of grammar (Lexical-Functional Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, etc.). As far as the derivational type is concerned, the derivational process goes on in an incremental manner through a series of structural alterations involving structural constraints, whereas in the case of the representational type as soon as the linguistic structure is built, it is checked for conformity to certain representational constraints. This paper argues that the two types are not simply mutually exclusive choices for the representation of linguistic structure. Rather, they constitute and also reflect two distinct and yet parallel modes of knowledge representation of language vis-à-vis the abstract (axiomatic) system of language from a metatheoretical perspective. That they are sometimes equivalent in expressing linguistic facts and sometimes divergent in descriptions of other linguistic structures is explained by appealing to the idea that the formal representation of language is bimorphic but not in terms of the same morphism. There exists a morphism instantiating an epimorphism (in the category-theoretic sense) that maps between categories of objects designating linguistic entities and procedures, establishing the divergence, while the case for equivalence can be simply treated as monomorphic (in terms of the category-theoretic notion of monomorphism). Hence, it leads to a split bimorphic representation of language. Then it is shown how divergent psycholinguistic findings on the conflicts between the derivational type of grammar and the representational type can be accommodated by appealing to the present model. Overall, this essentially shows that choices of representation of linguistic structure are partly determined by cognitive constraints/principles and any uncertainty between such choices can be accommodated in the current model that can admit of both entanglement and flipping between choices of representation of linguistic structure.
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A Synopsis by Prakash Mondal
becomes viable by being grounded in the possible conjunction of mental computations and cultural praxis. The possibilities of cultural capacities are enormous across societies and/or
cultures, but linguistic computations as have been postulated are restricted by the nature of constraints specific to natural language. The purpose of this paper is to see the consequences of how these two can make cognition viable.
research done on quantification have not yet been able to arrive at a useful but universally valid and satisfactorily unified account of how quantificational readings are derived at all, let alone computationally. Here in this paper, a preliminary sketch of a unified three-tier computational model will be drawn up to show how quantificational scope readings across languages can be computed and derived. For this purpose, principles drawn from recent derivational accounts of quantificational scope will be aligned properly to eliminate their incompatibilities with each other. "
register, repertoire, argot, variety, dialect, style, diglossia ( or multiglossia), sociolect, accent,
code switching, code mixing. These are part of a speech-society interactive relationship; they have
no isolated existence other than that in which all these sociolinguistic phenomena and constructs
mix up with one another, grow up and hence co-exist in an integrated setting.
In every society, this sort of integration happens, but the degree to which those phenomena mix
varies from one society to another, from one person to another and even within an individual from
one situation to another. This article postulates that the organic co-existence of these phenomena (and constructs)
happens everywhere in every utterance (and sometimes in writing), and that kind of mixture can
be placed on a continuum on one side of which exists the most mixed case and on the other, the least
mixed.
Books by Prakash Mondal
Reviews:
'This book sheds a new light on the relationship between language, mind and computation as conceived of in current linguistic theory.' Marcelo Dascal, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Papers by Prakash Mondal