#+TITLE: Women, Fire and Dangerous Things - Chapter 3

• tags :: 20200501163351-women_fire_and_dangerous_things[women, fire and dangerous things]]

• Claim: language makes use of our general cognitive apparatus

• so, lingusitic categories should be the same as other categories in our conceptual system
• in understanding langauge we can understand cognitive categories in general - this should indeed be a prime source of evidence because there is so much of it available.

• What evidence is there that language shows prototype and basic-level effects?

• General accepted position: langauge is modular and separate from the rest of cognition
• This basic assumption casts language and language categories as classical
• So, we need to understand what language is.
• It will impact whether we can use linguistic evidence to further our understanding of cognition.

• Evidence of Prototype Effects

• Marked and unmarked (boys and boy)

  • Is boy therefore cognitively simplier than boys?
  • Unmarked values are the default value of a category How tall is Harry? (tall is neutral) How short is Harry? (implies the Harry is short) Therefore, 'tall' is more basic than short.

• Phonology

  • Not sure I understand this ... a unit of speech sound (phone) and a cognitive element (phoneme).

• Morphology

  • String, Sling, Swing ... these are similar and are part of a single category
  • A central member and others that share similarities with it

• Syntax

  • Some nouns are more nouny than others

• Subject, Agent, Topic

  • More basic/prototypical subjects can be both agents and topics.

• Basic Clause Types

  • Some clauses are more basic than others

• Summary The author reckons there is enough evidence to say there are categories and prototypes going on in language. I think I can give him that!