The emergence of inostensible reference

Abstract

This thesis is a struggle to combine the developments in modern linguistics and philosophy of language by focusing on the emergence of inostensible reference. Inostensible reference is a linguistic tool that allows speakers/thinkers to refer to the unknown. My thesis claims that two stages in the biological evolution of language were necessary for inostensible reference to flourish: i) lexicalization: the operation transforming concepts into lexical items. ii) Merge: the operation combining lexical items according to grammatical principles. Though these two operations are foundational for inostensible reference, I claim that they are not sufficient because these same operations are also the basis of ordinary ostensible reference (and of the birth of full language faculty itself). I think that a third factor must have contributed to the rise of the inostensible reference. This third factor is glossogenetic in nature, namely it is due to a cultural change, not biological. And lastly, I suggest that a new connection between the core language faculty and conceptual-intentional system (allowing inference) may have allowed human being to use ostensible terms to form inostensible terms from them. By making us of the findings in different disciplines studying language such as philosophy of language, linguistics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, the thesis aims at encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration.