Language And Mind: Linguistics And Cognitive Studies - Mente E Linguaggio: Linguistica E Studi Cognitivi

These lectures in the philosophy of cognition are conceived as a crash course on the main theoretical issues surrounding cognitive processes and the interdisciplinary field that studies them—Cognitive Science. These theoretical issues provide the foundation for understanding the cognitive architecture of the mind and language. In this way, the course aims to equip students with the critical tools needed to question and reassess concepts and principles that are often taken for granted in cognitive studies.

COURSE CONTENT: Mind, Language, and World.
After defining the scope of the course, including a brief historical introduction, I will introduce a set of core concepts that will serve as a reference framework for discussing the broader field of cognitive science.
We will then explore several foundational questions concerning the study of the mind and language as cognitive processes. These include:

• (a) The search for a suitable cognitive architecture of the mind, and the idea of modularity;
• (b) Philosophical issues arising from a cognitive science approach to the mind;
• (c) The relationship between mental faculties, the brain, and the body;
• (d) The notions of “representation” and “computation”;
• (e) The concept of “modularity”;
• (f) The nature and explanation of concepts;
• (g) The relationship between thought and language.
  These topics will be examined in the first half of the course, primarily through the textbook The Philosophy of Cognitive Science by M. J. Cain. Though slightly outdated, this introduction offers a sufficiently robust framework for understanding mainstream approaches to the scientific study of the mind.
  In the second part of the course, we will focus more specifically on the relationship between language and thought, using Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature as our main reference. We will examine how the structure and use of natural language can provide evidence about the conceptual organization of the mind and about the ways in which human beings represent events, space, time, causation, agency, and social relations. Particular attention will be devoted to the relation between linguistic meaning and conceptual structure, to the extent to which language reflects or shapes thought, and to what linguistic phenomena can reveal about human nature and cognition. The discussion will also provide an opportunity to reconsider, in light of concrete linguistic data, some of the general issues introduced in the first part of the course concerning mental representation, concepts, and the architecture of cognition.

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TEACHING METHODS
Lectures will include critical discussion of the assigned texts and comparisons of differing viewpoints on specific topics. Students may be assigned readings (including supplementary material) to guide class discussion. Students will also be encouraged to briefly introduce certain topics themselves.

ASSESSMENT METHODS
Exam type:
Oral exam
Assessment of learning outcomes:
The oral exam is designed to assess both students' ability to express themselves and their understanding of the course content. Special emphasis will be placed on the students' ability to critically evaluate the topics discussed. This ability will also be partially assessed during the course, through their participation in classroom discussions and their engagement with assigned readings.
The exam will consist of five questions related to the material covered in the lectures and/or assigned texts.
ERASMUS students are strongly encouraged to contact the instructor in order to agree on a specific program. Failure to do so may result in significant difficulties in preparing for the exam.
Final score breakdown:

• 80% based on knowledge of lecture content and assigned readings
• 20% based on participation during the course
  ________________________________________
  GRADING CRITERIA
  Final Grade:
  Grade Description
  30 e lode (Cum Laude) Excellent performance, with strong knowledge and highly articulate, critical expression
  30 (Excellent) Outstanding performance, thorough understanding, well-structured and accurate expression, with critical insight
  27–29 (Good) Good performance, broad and satisfactory knowledge, generally correct expression
  24–26 (Fair) Adequate performance, basic knowledge with some gaps, expression not always precise
  21–23 (Sufficient) Sufficient performance, superficial understanding, but general grasp of topics is evident; weak articulation
  18–20 (Barely Sufficient) Minimal knowledge, superficial and inconsistent understanding, significant expressive and conceptual deficiencies
  <18 (Fail) Inadequate performance, lack of knowledge, poor orientation in the subject, exam not passed

• Cain, M. J. (2015). The Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Pinker, S. (2007). The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: Viking.

This course aims to provide a structured introduction to phonetics and phonology.
Upon successful completion of this course, students will have learned the basics of acoustic and articulatory phonetics, including how speech sounds are articulated, what sound is from a physical point of view, and how the articulatory properties of speech affect the acoustic signal. Students will also have become familiar with the basic tools and representations used in acoustic analysis.
In the second part of the course, students will be introduced to the model of linear phonology. Topics will include how speech sounds are represented and stored in long-term memory, the principles governing these representations, how the phonological component manipulates the abstract representations of speech sounds, and how to formalize the processes that mediate between the underlying representations of sounds stored in the lexicon and the surface forms that speakers produce. They will develop the skills needed to identify and describe phonological rules and to analyze simple datasets.

The course will cover the following topics:
Phonetics and Phonology
1.1. Domains and Goals
1.2. The Phonetics–Phonology Interface
Phonemes and Allophones
The IPA and Types of Transcription
Articulatory Phonetics
4.1. The Glottal Component
4.2. Vowels
4.3. Consonants
Elements of Acoustic Phonetics
5.1. Types of Sounds
5.2. Frequency, Amplitude, and Intensity
5.3. Waveforms, Spectrograms, and Spectra
5.4. Source-Filter Theory
5.5. Harmonics and Formants
5.6. Voice Onset Time
Linear Phonology
6.1. Features
6.2. Natural Classes
6.3. Phonological Rules and Their Formalization
6.4. Iterative Processes
6.5. Interacting Rules
6.6. Elsewhere Principle
Syllables and Moras

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The course combines lectures with in-class practical sessions and take-home exercises, which are discussed in class.

Attending Students
Attending students may take the exam in the form of two written tests held during the course, one on phonetics and one on phonology. Each test includes theoretical open-ended questions and short exercises, and is designed to assess both understanding of the subject matter and problem-solving skills. The final grade is the average of the two tests. Attending students who do not take these tests, or who do not pass them, will take the oral exam described below.
Non-Attending Students
The exam is oral. It includes both theoretical questions and exercises, and is designed to assess both understanding of the subject matter and problem-solving skills.

Attending Students
Course slides, supplemented by occasional readings (provided as PDFs).
Non-Attending Students
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. 2014. A Course in Phonetics. Wadsworth Publishing.
Odden, D. 2014. Introducing Phonology. Cambridge University Press.

The course aims at introducing students to the fundamentals of corpus analysis and its application to language learning. More specifically, the course will cover the following topics:
Week 1. Introduction to corpus research
Week 2. Usage-based theory
Week 3. Cognitive bases of learning
Week 4. Statistical learning
Week 5. Corpus research and acquisition
Week 6. Corpus research and the brain

The course introduces the basics of corpus research and it describes how corpus research may be employed in the study of language learning and acquisition. The course provides evidence for and against the use of statistical skills in language learning, and it covers the theories of cognition that more rely on this competence. Using the lenses of corpus analysis (also in comparison to experimental research) the course will describe the acquisition and use of linguistic units of varying size: words, sentences, discourse.

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There will be participatory activities in class, group work and individual work and a gradual development of skills, so attendance is strongly encouraged.
The course will consist of 4O hours of in-class teaching.

Assessment will consist of a final written test (25 points) and a group presentation of an assigned scientific article (5 points).
Non-attending students will receive their final 5 points with a short oral exam instead of the presentation.

Evison, J. (2010). What are the basics of analysing a corpus?. In The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 122-135). Routledge.
Ibbotson, P. (2013). The scope of usage-based theory. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 255.
Goswami, U. (Ed.). (2013). The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development. John Wiley & Sons (selected chapters).
Frost, R., Armstrong, B. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Statistical learning research: A critical review and possible new directions. Psychological Bulletin, 145(12), 1128.
Granger, S. (2003). The international corpus of learner English. Tesol Quarterly, 37(3), 538-546.
Ellis, N. C., Simpson‐Vlach, R. I. T. A., & Maynard, C. (2008). Formulaic language in native and second language speakers. Tesol quarterly, 42(3), 375-396.

Il corso si propone di fornire una comprensione critica delle problematiche che riguardano l'acquisizione del linguaggio, con focus sulla L1. Le tappe in acquisizione saranno presentate come una serie di sfide successive per il bambino, esplorando così l'equilibrio tra la sua dotazione genetica innata e la capacità di elaborare l'input fornito dalla sua comunità linguistica di riferimento.

Il corso fornirà una panoramica completa dei temi attuali nell'acquisizione del linguaggio, introducendo gradualmente le principali pietre miliari che segnano le fasi successive dello sviluppo. Tra i vari argomenti, il corso tratterà in modo più approfondito le seguenti tematiche: A) La sensibilità ai suoni del linguaggio: ritmo e percezione fonemica B) Segmentazione del parlato: strategie generali di elaborazione e strategie specifiche della competenza linguistica C) Il lessico: acquisizione del significato D) Acquisizione della morfosintassi e variazioni: macro e micro parametri E) Operatori logici G) Il discorso: le massime di Grice e il calcolo delle implicature conversazionali

E' necessaria una conoscenza delle nozioni basilari di Linguistica.

Didattica frontale

Test scritto alla fine del corso. Orale negli appelli successivi.

A) Maria Teresa Guasti (2016). Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. MIT

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Understand how multiple languages are represented and processed in the brain
Analyze the impact of age on second language learning
Evaluate the role of literacy and biliteracy in bilingual development
Critically assess the evidence for the bilingual advantage

This course explores the cognitive, developmental, and educational dimensions of bilingualism and multilingualism. Through weekly themes, students will examine how languages are processed in the brain, how age affects second language acquisition, the role of literacy in bilingual contexts, and the cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism.

None

There will be participatory activities in class, group work and individual work and a gradual development of skills, so attendance is strongly encouraged.
The course will consist of 36 hours of in-class teaching.

Assessment will consist of a final written test (25 points) and a group presentation of an assigned scientific article (5 points).
Non-attending students will receive their final 5 points with a short oral exam instead of the presentation.

Pliatsikas, C., Moschopoulou, E., & Saddy, J. D. (2015). The effects of bilingualism on the white matter structure of the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(5), 1334-1337.
Birdsong, D. (2018). Plasticity, variability and age in second language acquisition and bilingualism. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 81.
Bialystok, E. (2009). Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 12(1), 3-11.
Ellis, N. C., Simpson‐Vlach, R. I. T. A., & Maynard, C. (2008). Formulaic language in native and second language speakers. Tesol quarterly, 42(3), 375-396.

Please refer to the syllabi of each of the modules for detailed information.

Please refer to the syllabi of each of the modules for detailed information.

None

Lectures, seminars, group readings, and homework.

Please refer to the syllabi of each of the modules for detailed information.

Please refer to the syllabi of each of the modules for detailed information.

At the end of the course, students will be able to conduct the syntactic analysis and compositional interpretation for simple linguistic structures; they will also have a solid competence in the foundations of generative linguistics.

The course introduces students to the formal analysis of natural language syntax and to their compositional interpretation. In the first module, students acquire the fundamental concepts of generative syntax, the representation of constituent structure through tree diagrams, and the analysis of core structures in the clausal and the nominal domains, with a main focus on English. In the second module, the students acquire the basic notions of compositional interpretation in truth-conditional semantics, via a functional meta-language, and the analysis of core structures in the nominal domain and in the clausal domain up to the TP level.

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Class lectures and exercises

For module A (syntactic structures): written exam. For module B (Compositional semantics): oral exam.

For syntactic structures: Radford, A. 2024. Analysing English Sentence Structure. Cambridge University Press. Roberts, I. 2023. Beginning Syntax. An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis. Cambridge University Press For compositional semantics: Heim, I. and A. Kratzer. 1992. Semantics in generative grammar. Blackwell publishing.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Along with epistemology and metaphysics or ontology, the philosophy of mind is one of the traditional, core disciplines of philosophy, and has been such since at least Descartes. It is about the self, identification, and (self-)consciousness
In our days, the philosophy of mind uses many methods and concepts from the philosophy of language. In this class, we mainly explore how contemporary philosophy of language, AND contemporary linguistics, contribute to understanding the very possibility of our mental life and our consciousness – hence the concept of SELF.
The general aim is also to teach effectively 1) how to read and understand philosophical texts of intermediate difficulty in the philosophy of mind; 2) how to discuss them and their main arguments in relationship with the main conceptions and the history of the philosophy of mind, making connections and comparisons; 3) how to understand arguments, also on the basis of the background in the philosophy of language referred to above; 4) how to judge and assess arguments and key concepts at an intermediate level of difficulty; 5) how to discuss the historical development of the philosophy of mind in general terms; 6) how to develop better communicative abilities and even to start doing autonomous bibliographical research and proposing research projects.
As to how these results are to be reached, see DIDACTIC METHODS, about the lessons.
The expected result after the course is finished is that the student masters the tasks described in 1) through 6) and is able to show this during an oral colloquium in the final exam, in other words he or she must display a good fluency in philosophical language and a mastery of key technical terms. This result can usually be reached almost only if students attend classes, and do so ACTIVELY, by speaking and arguing, so attendance and participation in the discussion and ongoing conversation is highly recommended. Otherwise, additional readings are recommended, after contacting the teacher (see FURTHER INFO and TEXTS).
Bear in mind that a strong background in the philosophy of mind and the main tenets of the cognitive revolution and of cognitive thinking is absolutely mandatory not only for future philosophers and cognitive scientists, but also for prospective experts on logopedics, linguists, and students of machine learning etc., whether you want to do applied work or go on to study for a Ph.D. in such fields. The learning objectives discussed above are thus consistent with the aims of the Language and Mind Course, which are the study of language(s) and in general of the biological, psychological, and social basis of language and cognition, with its philosophical implications. Not to mention that reflection on language(s) and its connection to mind is essential for philosophy.

Basic Introduction to the connections between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language and of linguistics: Cognitive science, Chomsky, and the philosophy of language and mind (especially the problem of consciousness).

There are no prerequisites, but a serious interest in the cognitive sciences, and the philosophy of mind and of linguistics.

DIDACTIC METHODS
Lessons will be organized like a seminar, meaning that questions and remarks by students are more than welcome. We will read and comments texts together, and at some other times I will introduce and explain single theories and arguments. I will try to show by examples how philosophical discourse is constructed and criticized, how arguments can be assessed, how narratives about the development of theories in the philosophy of mind can be recognized or built, how key concepts, arguments and terms in a philosophical theory can be singled out and criticized, while reading texts, commenting theories, and trying to answer general problems and puzzlement. Developing these abilities by lively interaction (and home study) will be shown to be vital in order to acquire the competence described at the points 1) through 6) above.

FINAL ASSESSMENT
The exam is oral.
The assessment of learning will take place through a colloquium in which the student is supposed to be able to answer fluently questions on fundamental problems discussed in class, and reason autonomously about the connected debates and concepts. Non-attending students are required to read the texts with attention, and to be able to summarize their contents in a similar fashion. You may be asked to comment a page or two. (See points 1)-6).)
The final grade is the weighted mean of the grades o module 1 and module 2. Barring exceptional cases, the colloquium accounts for about 70% of the final grade. The rest depends on active participation in class, presentations or papers.
Attendance to class and active participation with questions etc. are therefore important for the final result. If a student (whether attending or not) wants, he or she can write a short essay (tesina) of about ten- twelve pages on a topic of their choice, with the help of the instructor. The short essay will only improve the final mark, just like a presentation in class.
GRADING CRITERIA Final Grade: Grade Description 30 e lode (Cum Laude) Excellent performance, with strong knowledge and highly articulate, critical expression 30 (Excellent) Outstanding performance, thorough understanding, well-structured and accurate expression, with critical insight 27–29 (Good) Good performance, broad and satisfactory knowledge, generally correct expression 24–26 (Fair) Adequate performance, basic knowledge with some gaps, expression not always precise 21–23 (Sufficient) Sufficient performance, superficial understanding, but general grasp of topics is evident; weak articulation 18–20 (Barely Sufficient) Minimal knowledge, superficial and inconsistent understanding, significant expressive and conceptual deficiencies <18 (Fail) Inadequate performance, lack of knowledge, poor orientation in the subject, exam not passed.

READING LIST:

• Noam Chomsky, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2000
• Voice in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philosophy of Linguistics”:
  Scholz, Barbara C., Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Ryan Nefdt, "Philosophy of Linguistics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL =
  https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/linguistics/
• Higginbotham, J. (2010). On words and thoughts about oneself. In I. Stojanovich, F. Recanati, & N. Vil-lanueva (Eds.), Context-dependence, perspective, and relativity (pp. 253–282). Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.
• Manuel García-Carpintero .(PDF), De se thoughts and immunity to error through misidentification. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282538218_De_se_thoughts_and_immunity_to_error_through_misidentification
• If need be, some other papers on de se and self-identification.
  These are the texts you have to read and be able to comment for the exam. I am at your disposal for any doubt or question by email, whatsapp or in person.