Language: A Biological Model

Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of
most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing them to biological norms that emerge from natural
selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.


Author: Ruth Garrett Millikan
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Published: 10/20/2005
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 8.16h x 5.92w x 0.52d
ISBN: 9780199284771

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2006 pg. 2007

About the Author

Ruth Millikan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut.

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