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No unleashed expression without language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2023

Robyn Carston Open the ORCID record for Robyn Carston [Opens in a new window]
Robyn Carston*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, UCL, London WC1N 1PF, UK. robyn.carston@ucl.ac.uk https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/people/robyn-carston
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Abstract

While the metarepresentational structure of ostensive communication may explain the unleashing of human expression, it neither explains the open-endedness of the thoughts expressed/communicated, nor how the multiply embedded nature of the metarepresentational structure invoked arose. These both require the recursivity of human language, a capacity which must be distinguished from external (public) languages and their use in communication.

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Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e6
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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