Piaget' comeback. Reflections on language in a post-Chomskyan era
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Abstract
Revisited in the light of the new models of the mind elaborated by so-called "post-classical cognitive science", Chomsky's vantage over Piaget was mainly due to the contrast between a strong model of language and a weak one (if not completely nonexistent). In the last twenty years, the situation has deeply changed, due to a new way of conceiving the human mind in terms of action-oriented and embodied models of cognition, more compatible with Piaget's idea of action-grounded knowledge. Action-oriented perspectives allow us to define a strong and consolidated model of language alternative to UG: relevance theory. In our view, today, Piaget has the opportunity to make a comeback against Chomsky thanks to the recognition and construction of a relationship between embodied perspectives and relevance theory.
Keywords
- Chomsky
- Embodied Cognition
- Language Evolution
- Mirror Neurons
- Piaget
- Relevance Theory