🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 3, 8:44 pm, Doug Morse <mo...@edoug.org> wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> OK, makes sense, and good to know -- thanks.  My experience has been
> that the study of language comprehension (within psychology) makes
> extensive use of the notion of concepts, but in that subfield they use
> the terms "propositions" and "propositional representations".  I just
> assumed that linguistics would also have some notion of concepts, but
> given that the focus is on the structure and function of language I
> can see where this would in fact not be necessary.  Again, good to
> know, and thanks.
>
> As far as what I think a concept is, well, that's in part what I'm
> trying to figure out and refine with my questions here.  That said,
> one way I think about concepts is that they subsume categorization,
> which in term subsumes object recognition:
>
>   +--------------------+
>   | Conceptualization  |
>   |   +--------------+ |
>   |   |Categorization| |
>   |   |   +-----+    | |  
>   |   |   | O.R.|    | |
>   |   |   +-----+    | |  
>   |   +--------------+ |
>   +--------------------+
>
> In this view, one defining characteristic of concepts is that they
> abstract over some space, time, or (set of) entities -- or quite often
> they abstract over other abstractions.  This is in contrast to
> categories, which also abstract, but predominately from just an
> instance to a class.
>
> Another way to define concepts is as the mental representation of
> important invariants in the content domain.  Kirsh (1991) puts it
> nicely: "....That is, to have a concept is, among other things, to
> have a capacity to find an invariance across a range of contexts, and
> to reify that invariance so that it can be combined with other
> appropriate invariances."
>
> It seems to me that there must be more complete/better/additional ways
> of defining concepts and conceptual representation/processing, but
> after much searching I'm surprised at how little I'm able to find.
> And this in light of the fact that the notion of concepts is
> ubiquitous in the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science,
> neuoscience, computer science, and education.

I'd guess this is covered by the agreement that linguistics doesn't
cover the "encyclopedia," or knowledge of the world.

When you get from "concepts" to meaning, then linguists --
semanticians -- will take notice.

> On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 04:47:28 -0700, Peter T. Daniels
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >  What do you mean by "concept"?
>
> >  I don't think it occurs as a technical term in linguistics.
>
> >  Language is a means of communication (with a number of enumerable
> >  characteristics). "Concept" isn't a means of communication, so I don't
> >  see where your confusion arises.-