P.hd in English:Philosophy of Language

P.hd in English:Philosophy of Language

This course is a survey of current research in areas and issues in Biolinguistics. It also proposes to cover a variety of approaches to language design (as a biological system) and the evolution of language. Some of the major areas of research will be covered in the following sections:

s Acquisition of speech and language

s Cognition and perception studies through different disorders of communication.

s Studies in lateralization and localization of language in brain through imaging techniques.

s Genes and language/speech.

s Speech and voice patterns of genetically related people

s Language and evolution

This area of research focuses on the powerful truth-conditional accounts of meaning proposed by philosophers such as Frege, Russel and Carnag in order to demonstrate the weaknesses of these accounts when they are applied to ordinary language. It also examines alternative theories advanced by later philosophers like Wittgenstein, Quine,. Austin and Searle, which seek to relocate the classic set of problems in a communicative context. Since recent works in Linguistics by Chomsky, Jakendoff and others have had a profound effect on the current philosophical debate on diverse issues, linguistic findings have been considered crucially relevant. This kind of research has as its central goal the development of sharper and more sophisticated analysis of long standing problems in linguistic philosophy.