Reply to “predictive processing and the semiological principle:: commentary to duffley”

Resumo

My notion of stable word meaning could correspond either to the root-node or the whole of a neurally-organized package and acknowledge that linguistic processing is largely holistic. The existence of words as context-free entities is not just a “cognitive idealization” however but a necessity, as otherwise speakers would have to make up their words on the spot. Holistic language processing undermines a sequential processing paradigm (first linguistic, then pragmatic). However, my model is only sequential in that linguistic-semantic units pre-exist their use and does not entail that a whole sentence must be assembled before pragmatic processing starts. The authors falsely suggest that I do not endorse a distinction between semantics and pragmatics. While I do argue that this distinction cannot be based on the sentence/utterance distinction, I hold that a clear dividing-line can be drawn between semiologically-signified and non-semiologically-signified content. I disagree that “even highly abstract, monosemic words like any should be seen as embodied, ” so that the mental process of random selection must be construed “in (complex) sensorimotor terms”. While one can form an image of someone picking out an apple from a basket, one cannot argue that one must do so in order to use any.