Language Evolution, Symbolic Cognition, Language Acquisition, Brain Development, Origin of the Human Mind | Terrence Deacon | 20
Mind & Matter
00:00
Iconicity and indexicality in language acquisition
Language acquisition involves the use of iconicity and indexicality to capture structure and meaning. Iconic and indexical relations are captured in the grammar and index of language, influencing the understanding and simulation of language. While language systems can answer questions based on the structure present in the corpus and questions, they may not fully understand what they are saying. In contrast, children acquire new words rapidly by going directly to the symbols, which differs from the process of training a network to acquire language.
Play episode from 02:18:35
Transcript
