Pragmatics - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2001

The relation between language and cognition in child development is one of the oldest and most debated questions, which has recently come back to the forefront of several disciplines in the social sciences. The overview below examines several universalistic vs. relativistic approaches to this question, stemming both from traditional developmental theories and from more recent proposals in psycholinguistics that are illustrated by some findings concerning space in child language. Two main questions are raised for future research. First, substantial evidence is necessary concerning the potential impact of linguistic variation on cognitive development, including evidence that can provide ways of articulating precocious capacities in the pre-linguistic period and subsequent developments across a variety of child languages. Second, relating language and cognition also requires that we take into account both structural and functional determinants of child language within a model that can explain development at different levels of linguistic organization in the face of cross-linguistic diversity.

This paper analyzes the piropo in Spanish discourse as a speech event and as cognitive metaphor. This form of indirect speech act represents a Spanish discourse tradition that is still present in today’s discourse practices of Spanish-speaking cultures. These piropos are seen as reflections in language of the traditional roles of men and women in Spanish speaking cultures. The roles of men and women as depicted in the analysis of piropos shows a very defined place for each sex in these societies. Women are constructed as passive recipients and reactive, men as active producers and initiators.

This paper examines the usage of NE in Chinese dialogues and monologues excerpted from a Chinese collection of narratives. The analysis of NE as a constituent in discourse structure shows that linguistically it functions like a grammatical connector. From a cognitive point of view, NE signals topic shift and focuses on new, contrastive information. It is argued that coherence is achieved through semantic contrastiveness, and pragmatic relevance. It is also argued that the prosodic feature of pause i.e. NE+{Pause}, serves to further emphasize the semantic contrastiveness in topic and comment. Coherence is defined not merely in terms of structural relations but more importantly from the viewpoint of semantic connectivity. It is the focus on semantic connectivity signaled by NE, which underlies the semantic cohesion in topic shifts.

Key arguments in J.P. Moreland’s The Creation Hypothesis that purport to provide a scientific basis for creationism as an alternative to evolutionary theory are examined. Arguments based on Bayes’ theorem, the existence of intracable mathematical problems, the close correspondence between the actual values of basic physical constants and those required for the existence of life, the second law of thermodynamics, the nature of infinity, the specified complexity of DNA, and the human-specificity of language are analyzed and found wanting. In general, the arguments are seen to fail as a result of confusions in word usage or meaning, sometimes of a very elementary nature. The scientific, philosophical, and ethical implications of the overall argument’s failure and the reasons for it are discussed.